Walking The Other Way

Dig Deep.
It's not there anymore.

We have this need you see.
To break the rules,
to find the new road,
no matter the cost.

We journey on, creating
and imagining,
defying what is,
denying what was.

We search for that something new
that something different
than the thing we have.

We rejoice,
fooling ourselves that
this is the thing, the reason,
the purpose.

But its just the next thing.

We have this disease you see,
to shun our faiths,
to walk the other way,
thinking that somehow
the path remains the same.

We break our rules,
because they are.

especially the puritans,
because the closer we live
to our God and our duty,
the greater we enjoy,
the lust we avoid.

A generation or so ago,
we walked with Pandora,
peering deep into the box,
we've reached the bottom.

There's nothing left.

Now, taboo is taboo.

We've traded our convention for
the joys in that box.
It ended
thirty years ago.

And in a bar,

deep in the Bowery, we watched
as the last of the jewels
from inside that box,
explode in brilliance,
on a flimsy dirty stage.

Foul mouthed Patti sang her song
so passionate, so true, yet it was a cry of loss,
the loss of the last innocent thing
devoured and digested, now,
a part of the past like all the rest.

How fitting that our journey with Pandora
ends in bar full of depravity full of spite
and yet full of what is to come.

Everything defied,
no prisoners taken, scorched Earth.

What's more profound,
the beauty or the irony?

And so, we've wandered like starving nomads,
waiting for someone to find something new,
something to rejoice, something to defy,
yet we've defied it all now and the box appears
empty.

We wander now. We hope and pray
we find that new thing,
to continue our journey
walking the other way.