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| There are worse places than Purgatory |
The bar is dark and there are plenty of stools
for strangers here.
No one asks your name. Nobody cares.
They too had worn out their welcome everywhere
else before you sat down...
but the glasses are clean… not a germ on ‘em.
The house is so full of disease that a germ couldn’t
live here.
It won’t do to make excuses.
I didn’t come in to find the answers.
But I’m not dodging the questions either.
I’ve got outstanding warrants but it doesn’t
matter…
They are all warrants from Hell.
They don’t serve them kinds of warrants in
purgatory.
No one thinks of damnation or redemption in
places like these.
It is a matter of the Passing of Time.
“What is your favorite pastime?” the washed-up
talk-show host asks the has-been actor…
“Looking for work,” he quips.
The bartender pours three fingers of bad scotch
into a germ-free glass…
Everybody has all the answers.
“What?”
“Got any questions?”
“Yeh, I have a few questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Resurrection?”
“Ain’t no resurrection in Purgatory…. Just the
Passing of Time. What else can I do for you?”
“Another three fingers of scotch? … better
scotch than that. Pour it into the same germ-free glass.”
“I’m lost,” I whisper, but none but the
bar-keep is paying any attention.
“You’re in Ithaca, sailor.”
“New York?”
“No, Ancient Greece.” He says, like he is used to
people lost in his bar.
“How do I get outa here?”
“Why would you want to leave?”
“Just curious.”
“Well now, you don’t get out of here if you
are… just curious.”
“I see what you mean”
“Do you? Can you get off your dead-ass and walk
out the door?
The way
out of here is away?”
“A way?”
“If you will.”
The bar is full now and the Juke Box filled the
sordid silence with something that throbbed in a perfect imitation of a living, a writhing, gnashing, breathing, angry, animated thing.
I got up and, as I rose, my stool was already
taken.
Aquella
eternal fonte esta ascondida
en esta vivo
pan por darnos vida,
aunque es de
noche.
A way.
Via Dolorosa.
Away from the bar and onto a dark street… a
way.
That step out of the door and into the night was
such a one like Armstrong on the moon.
No longer doing time, there is no time to do.
One step out of Purgatory… even the nothingness
of the dark night
holds a
promise that can’t wait.
Airless and void… surrendered without words…
One giant step for… raise a white flag on the
Sea of Tranquility… claim this emptiness for all mankind.
I surrender to the cosmos… suffering and
murderous treachery absolved in one purifying stroke,
I breathe-in the void.
-“The eternal fountain is unseen
in living bread that gives us being
in the black of the night.”-
Saint John of the Cross is huddled in an alley
as I pass, embracing a jug of white port, I thought I heard him say something
about her and then…
“Keep moving, Boyo. They can’t bury you if you
keep moving.
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