Left Coast Memories

Thunder rises on the horizon.
Felt before it is heard: a rift in the air.
The long exhale is a feigned act at giving back
a piece of myself to the world.
I remember fear. Cold and earnest.
It breathed and rasped with the tide of all humanity.
And the sweat that lingered there was nothing but purity.
Now, I smoke lifeless cigarettes to cancel out memory.
The chase is over.
I remember chaos, and I remember purgatory.
That asinine hell of contentedness.
Fear tears it apart utterly.
The time came quickly to flee and see and know more:
to understand a world that must be breathtaking
beyond my tiny sphere of soon-to-be shambles.
Here, now, cold and alone and insane
from nights like these full of ungodly drugs
and smoke that wafts and wanes in the unforgiving breeze.
October, it gets too cold at night.
Surely the summers were longer
when that love for the passing of days still warmed my breast.
I remember something foreign,
something that stuck in my mouth and ventricles.
Something guttural and once fearless.
I remember it because it was everpresent.
Because it didn't change like the slides of
settings that seemed as inconsistent as the sky.
Things of beauty, and things of truth
all things painted with the glory of something innate and memorable.
Hoping that somehow I made a mark.
That somewhere amongst these crazed travels
fueled by regret and wonderment and pursuit,
I managed to scorch an initial into the mind of someone.
Still, even if these travels have been naught but sandcastles--
austere and valiant in their new creation, but destined to sink and shudder
and be washed away--I have been gratified by it all.
For even pain and ignorance and blatant disregard result in some profit,
and experience is the gold to be found at day's end.
My hope is that before I depart this sullen world,
as I know full well that day may be soon,
I will have not fought these battles, loved these people,
bled and sung and smiled and carried on in vain.
That there is something still congruent with my impatient human spirit.
And that this restlessness has led to something more than candor.
I still have a voice, though daft and weakening,
and though my soul and body will someday bow to the folds of time,
let that voice echo through the ages,
and touch whom it may, to remind them:
Ego was here.