"Curséd am I, a failure all my life!
Why should I try another day to gain?
Cast out by my employer yesterday,
What will I do to pay the next month’s rent?”
Said Harold as he shuffled through the town,
the bleak city that he had grown to loathe.
Ambitions drained by miserable events -
Was stripped of peace by a betraying love,
His income by a cruel, uncaring boss -
He searched the cheerless corners of the town
for toxic indulgence that would console.
By chance he found a dingy little bar
That housed a couple ashen ghosts of men,
an old and wretched keeper with a rag,
with toothless mouth and a patch on his eye.
“Hello good men,” said Harold, entering.
Some muffled grunts he heard as their reply.
He ambled toward the nearest broken stool,
And waved half-heartedly to the tender -
“I’ll have the strongest stuff that you have got.”
The old man smiled with his rotting black gums,
And groped below the bar with yellow claws.
He pulled out a plain phial of liquor clear
and held it in small Harold’s childish face.
“Would you like me to serve it in a glass,
or will you gulp it down with desperate lips?”
He cackled as he put the phial away:
“You think you feel unutterable pain,
you foolish little child of a man?
You’re not in need of that disgusting stuff,
how ‘bout a Shirley temple or a coke?”
“What right have you to patronize me so?”
said Harold, standing up with youthful rage,
“I said I need a drink, so serve me, man!
I’m trying to forget this hellish day.”
“Observe the men who sit around this place:
look at their calloused hands and tattered shirts.
I serve them, for they have no life to live,
they have been wrung like towels and left to dry.”
Like looming piles of dust the poor men sat,
with glasses of brown liquor in their hands.
They never seemed to lift them to their lips,
but they were emptied in few minutes’ time.
“How can they stay in such a wretched place
and rest as if they were in their own homes?”
“They cannot leave and see the light of day,
I told you - they’ve no life outside this bar.
I serve them here the stuff they need to live.”
The barman went to fill an empty glass.
“But what makes them feel so miserable?
What made them choose to waste away their lives?”
“They did not choose this, Harold, silly man!
They’re victims of this bar the same as I.
They came here to ‘forget a hellish day,’
and here they’ll stay until the day they die.”
A wave of terror pummeled Harold’s mind,
and back he stepped from the decrepit bar.
“I never once to you mentioned my name,
or gave you anything to judge me by!
What secret power does this place possess?
What dark enchantment have you…on me…used?”
With this, the elder screwed his face up tight,
and leaned close to the boy over the bar,
and slowly as the tide, lifted the patch
that had covered, ‘til then, his furtive eye.
Recoiling at the sight, poor Harold gasped,
but could not take his stare off of the sphere
that looked not like a normal eye at all -
it was a silver pool of swimming orbs.
“You are a man at disadvantage, yes,
but not by others’ faults, solely your own.
You are naïve and childish in your heart,
A boy you are- hardly a man at all!
Beware a life like mine, and don’t forget -
the things you want in life require work!
Don’t wallow in self sorrow all your days,
improve yourself, and happiness will come!”
But Harold didn’t hear the last few words,
for he took haste in exiting the bar
at the first sign of counsel given there -
the warning offered by the hideous man.
Now feeling even poorer than before,
his worries escalating by the hour,
he opted to pay visit to Gerard,
his friend whose house was stocked with sinful treats.
The entertainment district housed Gerard,
where red lights flashed and sultry music blared;
Where lusty wand’rers mingled in the streets,
strange girls and men who laughed and screeched and danced.
The pang of sadness throbbed with every step
that Harold climbed on his way to Gerard’s,
where people lounged and kissed on the steep stairs,
and disregarded the down-trodden man.
He knocked upon the shabby wooden door,
And waited as he heard the muffled sound
Of music and Gerard’s electric voice,
Who opened in a moment, smiling broad.
“Well if it isn’t my pathetic friend,”
He said, leading him in, hand on his back.
The room was flooded with a violet light,
The air was thick with smoke and musky scents,
And girls scantily clad were strewn about
Like blankets on the couch and on the floor.
“I see you have not changed the place a bit,”
Said Harold, stepping o’er a giggling girl.
“I like to keep it filled with pleasant guests.
Now let me guess why you dropped by tonight:
You want to try the newest stock of goods.
Well, Harold, let me show you what I’ve got.”
In his shirt pocket a small vial was kept,
He pulled it out and smiled with handsome pride.
Then on his blazon tongue, he placed one drop
Of inky liquid that the vial contained.
“And now, your turn,” he said, tossing the vial
To Harold who stood, stupidly amazed.
He stared at the strange stuff with probing eyes,
looked up to ask Gerard “what will it do?”
but he’d become a blanket like the girls,
his face a swirling map of smiles and tears.
With that, he grinned and tilted back his head,
drank down nearly a teaspoon of black slime,
and entered an eternal realm of dark -
it seemed a void, but all at once a maze.
The air churned like the mighty waves of sea,
there was no floor, nor gravity, nor time.
With no point of perspective, Harold flew
through the forgotten corners of his mind
and was bombarded with strange floods of light.
From one of these eruptions came a face,
the most seraphic that he’d ever seen,
that hovered like a cloud about his head,
and spoke to him with pure, unspoken words:
“At last, you’ve gone and made the final plunge
Into the world where darkness meets the day.
We’ve been expecting you for quite a while,
It seems you’ve been avoiding the hard truth.”
The message boomed like thunder in his head,
The words she spoke decrypted in his mind,
And tears of realization dribbled forth,
And like a boy, to the face, Harold spoke:
“Oh, tell me, lovely Muse, what can I do?
How can I get myself out of this hole?
So long I have been slipping further down,
Denying and ignoring who I am.”
“I’ve helped you all I can, foolish young man,
The rest is up to you to solve yourself.
Evaluate the sickness deep inside,
Take lesson from the stygian world around.”
The vision slowly faded into black,
As Harold groped and blubbered desp’rately;
Refusing to discover for himself
The self-evolving lesson from within.
Awaking after hours of deep, black trance,
He wept and garbled incoherently,
And gasped, seeing the place he’d ended up:
The austere beach, attracting a small crowd.
“Give him a coat!” screeched a hoary old shrew.
He noticed then, he was without his clothes,
His skin was bruised and torn in many spots.
He squinted at the sun that pierced like knives
His eyes that had grown custom to the Black,
And yearned to see once more the lovely soul -
The patronizing face of revelation.
Ignoring all the ugly gawkers ‘round,
he rose to his sore feet and faced the sea,
and with uneasy steps, submersed himself
beneath the churning force of salty waves.
He walked with leaded legs on the sea floor,
the sand puffed up in mushrooms ‘round his feet,
and tiny bubbles slipped between his lips,
that did not gulp or gasp for a new breath,
but, with acceptance, parted and relaxed,
and let the briny water cleanse the gums.
His body, bruised and cut, with saline stung,
and treated, scrubbed, and left a healthy pink,
and all his perspiration washed away,
and he was thus reborn beneath the sea.
The power of the mighty ocean deep
to Harold spoke like no words ever could;
it taught him of the brevity of life,
the tininess of his mere human soul.
With newfound strength, he swam up to the light
with forceful arms and feet propeller-fast.
He reached the gleaming surface and he smiled,
for everything around looked bright and new:
the sky that he had hardly seen before,
(boxed out by looming towers made of steel,)
above the ocean, shone a blinding blue,
with clouds that sailed with ethereal grace.
With overwhelming calm, he made his way
back to the sandy shore, where he would face
the years remaining of his transient life
with new stability and inner peace.
And, there amongst the litter, sat a man,
a bum, with filthy face and threadbare clothes,
his visage stricken with a desp’rate hunger,
who held out, to Harold, a grubby hand,
“spare change, my boy, to help a dying man?”
He stopped and pondered, smiling with his eyes,
“I’ve nothing for you in the way of cash,
but if I did, you’d be no better off.
No one can help you in this trying life,
consult yourself: the answers are inside.”