It’s somewhere after 4:00am on a Thursday in September, the sound of rain on the aluminum flashing is pattering away outside my windows, and sleep eludes me again. When I can’t sleep, my mind races on about a million different things at any given point in time. To cope with some of these thoughts that gnaw at me incessantly, sometimes I feel myself inspired to write. Sometimes what comes out is complete and utter nonsense; sometimes it’s something that might be worth sharing.

Evan H. Garcelon

Tonight I believe I’m ready to share something that may perhaps hold some kind of meaning to those who may still sometimes be searching for it, as I myself continue to do. In the early months of this year, two friends were lost to me. Lost to us. Those of you who knew them know the pain all too well that was felt by all who were fortunate enough to have been a part of their brief allotment of time here on this earth. Though the path of the afterlife is a thing of which I profess no knowledge or particular prevailing belief, I would like to think that these two souls are still part of this existence; are still a part of the energy we carry with their memory.

Adam C. Aries

I don’t know what may come after this, if we will be reunited with those we’ve loved in some grand, elaborate paradise among the clouds; if there’s a Heaven or a Hell, if there are angels and demons, reincarnation, an eternity of nothing… and I’m not really sure I ever want to know until the time comes for me to experience it for myself, but I want to believe that there’s something good to come of what time we are given. I want to believe that our time is something we actually are given. To know that being conscious of our fleeting moments here with eachother are worth something more than just a passing thought.

With that said, I’ve written two pieces of unpolished expression about the people and the experience of losing them. Call them poems, prose, songs, I’m not really sure what they are or what they may become as my thoughts on the matter continue to evolve, and with them, more writing. This is just what’s come out of me in the wake of their passing. I have been reluctant to share them up until now, and I’m not even sure what drives me to do so now, on this particular night. Perhaps it’s sleep deprivation that leads to an obsessive need to write, perhaps it’s something more; who knows. But here is what I’ve written, my only hope is that it may make sense to some of you, the way the process of writing it has helped me make some remote kind of sense of what I can only define as senseless tragedy.

A Prayer for the Lost; Evan’s Song

We’ve all been given chances
We could elude or could evolve
Whoever knew one last romance would
Be the ledge from which you’d fall

Now your voice an echo in my mind
Could always sense the smile inside
I saw you walk the distant shoreline
But never watched you wave goodbye

This sterile, indifferent entity
It turns a man to what he’s not
Can’t put words to what you meant to me
But I know the enemy you fought

When all the rest is burned away
Erase the sorrow and decay
There lies you

Beyond the battles that you waged
Was something innocent and brave
There lies you

You’d just barely begun to bloom

I believe that you had the strength to
Put down the demons that drove you into
The embrace of the dark charade

With so many words left unspoken to you
I know damn well we lost you too soon
One last time… and the choice was made

We’ve all been given choices man
A chance to accept or to refuse
Some we never want to make again
But some we win and some we lose

Now I know the demon well my friend
And I understand its clever ruse
But i just wasn’t ready, man
Why the hell’d you have to choose?

You were so strong, you’d been through it all
Couldn’t nothin’ ever fuck with you
And now you rest in the earth my friend
What the hell are we to do?

So I say…

Sleep
Sleep sweetly friend
And I will pray for you

Dream
Dream of sorrow’s end
Keep the memories I cling to

Scream
Scream in denial again
Until there’s nothing left to do

Please
Don’t close the coffin’s lid
Wasn’t ready to lose you too

Eulogy of an Epoch; Verses for Adam

Wrap this urn with reverence here
And solidfy
This hesitant urge and fading fear
To break and cry

Given years, a brotherhood found
And in time
You’ve returned us tears, passed without sound
Or saying goodbye

Vision monochrome and broken down
By words that go unspoken now
And this world feels like foreign ground
This theif I can’t abide

If there a God so exists
He takes from ours the best
Exchanged for holes within our chests
And casts us aside

We are but fragile muscle
And fractured, brittle bone
Forsake us, and we die

As long as I am breathing and alive
I will be grateful for myself and mine
But I can’t beleive it had to be your time

You’ve been ripped away, you’re gone
Your journey ended now and done
Beloved brother, friend and son

I must close my eyes against this mad design
Turn my tear-stained face away
And just silently drift on

And within the space of a stuttered sigh
I must learn to say goodbye

Thank you for entertaining my ramblings this far. It is a significant event for me to be able to share my own personal brand of expression. While I admit that sharing these things puts me in a state of uncomfortable vulnerability, I’m told it’s healthy to get it out of me. It helps me to release some of the frustration, some of the anger, the hurt that I feel on a level which I’m not often able to speak about. It is not my intention, and I certainly hope these have not revisited wounds too painfully, and I mean no arrogance in assuming, but perhaps it’s added a little strength to the sutures already in place.

At least, that’s what it does for me.

[r.b.]