PURGATORY
The bar is dark and there are plenty of stools for strangers here.
No one asks your name.
Everyone had worn out their welcome everywhere else before you sat down…
but the glasses are clean… not a germ on ‘em.
The house is so full of disease that a germ couldn’t live here.
It won’t do to make excuses.
I didn’t come in to find “the answers”.
No longer am I dodging the questions.
I’ve got outstanding warrants but it doesn’t matter…
They are all warrants from Hell and they don’t serve them kinds of warrants in purgatory.
No one thinks of damnation or redemption in places like these.
It is a matter of the Passing of Time.
“What is your favorite pastime?” the washed-up talk-show host asks the has-been actor…
“Looking for work,” he quips.
Looking for answers?
The bartender pours three fingers of bad scotch into a germ-free glass…
“What?”
“Got any questions?”
“Yeh, I have a few questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Resurrection?”
“Ain’t no resurrection in Purgatory…. Just the Passing of Time. What else can I do for you?”
“Another three fingers of scotch? … better scotch than that. Pour it into the same germ-free glass.”
“I’m lost,” I whisper, but no one but the bar-keep is paying any attention.
“You’re in Ithica, sailor.”
“New York?”
“No, Ancient Greece.” He says, like he is used to people lost in his bar.
“How do I get outa here?”
“Why would you want to leave?”
“Just curious.”
“Well now, you don’t get out of here if you are… just curious.”
“I see what you mean”
“Do you? Can you get off your dead-ass and walk out the door?
The way out of here is away.”
“A way?”
“If you will.”
The bar is full now and the Juke Box filled the sordid silence with something that throbbed in a perfect imitation of a living… a writhing, gnashing, breathing, angry animated… thing.
I got up and, as I rose, my stool was immediately taken.
Aquella eternal fonte esta ascondida
en esta vivo pan por darnos vida,
aunque es de noche.
A way.
Via Dolorosa.
Away from the bar and onto a dark street… a way.
That step out of the door and into the night\was such a one like Armstrong on the moon.
No longer doing time, there is no time to do.
One step out of Purgatory… even the nothingness of the dark night
holds a promise that can’t wait.
Airless and void… surrendered without words…
One giant step for… raise a white flag on the Sea of Tranquility… claim this emptiness for all mankind.
I surrender to the cosmos… suffering and murderous treachery absolved in one purifying stroke,
I breathe in the void.
“The eternal fountain is unseenin living bread that gives us being
in the black of the night.”
Saint John of the Cross is huddled in an alley as I pass, embracing a jug of white port, I thought I heard him say something about her and then…,
“Keep moving, Boyo. They can’t bury you if you keep moving.”
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