detox '04

Summer of ’04

     still smarting from all of ’02

On the first day

     pretty sure I missed the bus...

Yeah, I missed the bus.

The next time

     I paid three of my gold dollars

     Only to figure out there was a bus that went there everyday, for free

          Of course that meant getting up earlier

               Fortunately

               In Central America, I found I was a morning person

               But only in Central America

And walking about a mile from the middle-of-nowhere roundabout

     to the front gate of the penitentiary

     every morning

Amblin’ along with Ben Folds Five’s Fair in my head

     Thinking in my head how awesome I was at playing that piano part

     Maybe John Martin on bass

     Maybe Aaron W. on drums

          Neither had I seen in years

          And not since

But the imagining always got me through the walk

Always brought me to the front gate

Every day I did this

Like it was a sacrament

     or something

And oh the doing it

Just to do it

The dragging of the feet

The heart on the sleeve

The hopeless emoting

The radical suffering

The ineffable drama

     Of 

          detoxing

This was a sick broken-hearted boy

Trying to be a man

This was growing up

     Heretofore never having been so painful

     And thankfully not since

This

     apparently

          was the actual feeling of a neo-cortex of the brain

          trying to violently assert itself

          whether I wanted it or not

And I most certainly did not

So I would take what I learned

     from young prison inmates

Back to Belize City

Back to the bay where I boarded with Satch

And I would debrief Satch at the end of his day of building orphanages

Satch told me to write it down

because he knew I’d want to tell the story someday when I was feeling better

               I could not have been in better care

And I would practice that piano part

Every night I did this

It was sacrament

     Or something