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Activist reflecting back with tenderness and humor on a long life of fighting for social justice causes

lyrics

Ninety


It’s rather a shocker, to nature & even myself
the fact that I’ve survived.
Most figured, & I don’t mind saying it,
that I’d die young,
one of those frail neurotic types for whom,
to be borne, the world is too much.

The thought could make one nauseous,
but all I can do now is laugh & laugh,
wondering just who in hell is left
for me to celebrate this with.

The cats, I suppose,
Duchess, Periwinkle, & old slant-eyed Redcoat
with his left ear half missing.
I’ve nineteen altogether,
their life spans a collective karma
for the incarnations I’ve gone through,
who I was during this decade, that,
each, more or less,
a bit of a scrap pile...

Fingering the tatters, everything floods back,
the chain smoked years waking up
to stumble over bottles
or into arms——
Ricardo’s, Jack’s, those throwing down lifelines while, in actuality,
searching for their own,
the mattress going, “Dao! Dao!”,
‘til I decided friendships were best.

Then, as you know,
I fell into leaf-letting, demonstrations, & the lot,
even 24 hours in some cold piss-stenched jail.
In between there were letters, books, the cinema,
wash days, picnics, & every odd job imaginable.

I remember feeding Suicide Bernie
coffee one long night for hours.
I remember C.C’s cancer
ravishing flesh the way famine does.
“Oh good.” I think Izzy said
on the death of McCarthy.
“Where’s the mercy?, asked Shirl
on whatever occasion, the 3rd world, our own street,
she came up against the cruel.
But, as I’ve alluded, they’re gone,
gone except to me, cradling,
crinkling, smoothing such lace
mentioned now ‘n then to the curious
visitors who trickle in.

“What was it like?” or “What should I do?”
Questions like that.

Once in awhile, as if at a river,
I see a bright thread, a flash of this
unattainable masterpiece where their reflection
is mine, rippling superimposed, first puzzled,
then, placid, but,
come on, at ninety,
once in awhile is still pretty fair odds.

credits

from Choral Soliloquies (I), released May 20, 2017
sample: Private Reflection Kevin MacLeod, Incompetech.com

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Stephen Mead Albany, New York

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published outsider artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. If you are at all interested please place his name in any search engine in conjunction with any of the above-mentioned genres for links to his multimedia work and merchandise. To order CDs via VISA or PayPal please visit stephenmeadmusic.weebly.com ... more

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