10,147. DICTATUM BENEFICIO

DICTATUM BENEFICIO
(long-term memory fade)

Brown walls can't make for a blue day;

skip to my Lou, my darling. I was

two hundred and fifty feet away and

heard that piano playing : something 

sad by Stephen Foster on the side of

this cemetery hill. No one else seemed

to notice (it was only myself, maybe 

three others, walking off the other hill).

The cemetery of old St. Peter's, with the

harbor gunshots in its brick. How do we

memorialize death and destruction, oh

please now, tell me anew. I've forgotten

so many things.

-

When I was fourteen, I wore a cassock

and an alb. Soon enough, all that turned

into a barge-load of turtles and slowly slunk

away  -  I became free again, to dance with

my dreams and dream while I danced. No

one ever tells you the real world stinks, and

people don't give you a chance, and all dangers

lurk for the unwitting, and pain hurts and

butterflies can't sing, and what you get

doesn't mean a thing. The first few times

I saw a girl naked, it was enough to make

me die  -  and then enough to make ME

sing, forget the butterflies, and now

I forget, as I said, most everything.

- 

So that's the way this fat world rotates,

spinning around on its rounded side to

just turn and turn again. The repeat pattern 

gets delicious, and then it fades. Ask any

old-timer what he remembers best : he

won't remember and forgets the rest.