Byline: Butterscotch Blues

Buford Youthward
stockcap@hotmail.com

We, who hold the world in our hands, resent our dependence and hold contempt for our rejecters, long for anthems not analysis, agonize over myth as public dream and dreams as private myth, take yesterday's hieroglyphics and design a new story.

Humming a butterscotch blues in the sun, we work on getting things done, composing symphonies with empathy fusing fortuity and a wide-eyed willingness knowing somewhere an eruption is near. Impulse and passion always overpower reason where fear of flowing volcanoes is concerned.

There's madness in all human beings and a sick beauty in the confluence. On a ragged throne sits a king with a crown made of Legos and an ego made of egg yolk.

Waiting for honest effort to meet its reward we fidget like visitors in the museum laughing as the muse leaves the building, laying our ghosts to rest, forcing peace upon a corrosive culture spoon fed war.

Attention winners and heroes and all those out for your get on rewards, the good ship is sailing in. I watch and sit cross legged on the dock throwing down pepper steak sandwiches, buttered toast and coffee. It's mad good.

No temporary bargain can be taken too far even when you're trying to be bigger than who you are. Importing ideas from tradition, my boys are a bunch of post no-wave nobodies that buddy up but can't hang out.

But we're not long for this world and continue to find sport in wrapping myths atop misunderstanding. Listening to lonesome whistles in the night, the train came through my neighborhood, the freights played their rhythm while the boys and I smoked, joked, drank and cranked up the conversation. A promise rides the rails at night.

If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much room. So says the half baked dope head primitives who prize sensation over sense. They have the experience but miss the meaning. Growing up, like writing, is a process not an event.

I try to trust the tale and not the teller, remembering an African proverb: Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.

Read more in Byline

Art Crimes Front Page