I hate post-mortem apologies,

Preferring the onus of fool

While it can still linger

On the palate,

Aurificate from the Pilate's seat.
 
 

Hence this curtain-call by

That noted Catskills diva, Mea Culpa,

Accompanied by a fanfare couched

In the selfsame bongoid timbre once,

In night long-relays, used to drub

From our devolved existence a tiresome

Over-established, underwritten, and

Ideologically bevested seedling

With visions of Jackian growth.
 
 

There was no interest in trade beans

Or other mercenary biofacts,

Particularly since the cow had already

Been slaughtered, sauced, ribbed, and skirted.

We planted them instead, in the woodwork,

Fertilized with otters and the mace of divine right,

Where they quietly ate their way into the somber

Rites of beatification, lending the corkscrew directrix

To sanctitropicity and eventually producing the

Gaudiest invisible man ever to reemerge from the

Bleak cubbyhole I inherited and fled,

Spending my hours in Morley's chair to escape

The vengeful defending moral linebackers.
 
 

Not until my kid came home one day, big-eyed

And dripping with untold surprises, saved for the

Juiciest skip-a-beat moment of dinner and then unleashed:

 "You know that story you tell about the Baltimore beatnik?

How he told you the truth about nutmeg? How all

You guys got stoned and sick on mace

The night before the big (unreported) conference

And woke up to a dining room full of Native ancestors in

Full regalia? Well, my friends have this book...... AND

THAT STORY'S RIGHT THERE IN THE INTRODUCTION."
 
 

So it was indeed, a reminder that the supposed enemy spy

Sometimes is merely the true outsider following a call

Heard through other mufflings, a first responder

Whose answer we can't yet recognize.
 
 

The drums are tachyonically unwound, Andrew,

Their beat no longer even a summons, just a reggae

Grace note behind the memory of fire, a lilt

For the inward stroll we all must take alone.

They will be muffled someday, at heart's end, but

The unsought resonances will have danced the web

Through decades of shimmering and made of us all

Things we never looked to be.
 
 

If other rooms had housed us, perhaps we might have

Become in part what the other found in those etched-plywood

Mysteries and sagas: generations will inhabit our reliquary,

To be safely bequeathed the questing.

Best ourselves now: my part is to pass the drums

To you, that they may speak in full the dreams

We never saw for fearing the precipice.
 
 

Sleep sweetly. It is done.
 
 

- David W. Mitchell
 

to David   /  to Moongate