where were you when I was still kind

just a water treader

waiting on the line

How was I to know that a city I’d never been to, would have so many ghosts waiting for me. How was I to know that at this point in life that’s all there is. Ghosts.

It was the concert venue and its resemblance to The Greek Theater in LA, it was Josiah, the opening act, who talks and looks like a recent lover, it was the town, Jacksonville, Oregon next to Medford where J, a lover I still think about often, escaped to after we lost touch, it was Gregory Alan, the main act, who I have seen in the desert before. The desert I love and I’ll never see again. It was the current lover, whose ghost is kinder to me than he could ever be. It was the ghost of who I was before half a century snuck up on me. It was the ghost of my youth and immortality.

Master and Hound

Turned circus swinger

How was I to know that all those ghosts were waiting for me to bring out so much anger in me and then I thought of my lover and his lips saying “I love you” but his actions holding all disregard for me no matter how I ask.

Can you shake it up

just once for me.

your little globe just so we can see

The snow blowing around your hands

His little globe I don’t fit into.

But if you get drunk enough, you forget past and present ghosts so I walked into a bar closing the door on all of them.

~Lyrics from Master and Hound by Gregory Alan Isakov