Visions of Diamonds

Visions of Diamonds

I

Tonight I have seen the soul of the city and it is dead.

For as I left my near uninhabitable dormitory for a date with a Nat Sherman, the most overpriced brand of cheap suicides,

I noticed in the sky four lights beaming like a cheshire grin in the night sky,

four horseman of the dawn waiting to show me the way,

who called out to me with a soft “Alex...Alex...”

as I heeded the call vehemently,

charging after those voluminous brights with a speed I thought only my intellect runs at

knowing that I’d find what I needed

to keep me in this city I’d lost nearly all fondness for in the last six months.

As I ran the Sherman hitched a ride behind my ear,

staying in place only because of the traveling cap I wore

to remind me of Jack Kerouac from the cover of Scattered Poems

and went along for the ride as I coasted the night breeze, a scattered poem myself,

and overtook cars going 20 mile an hour filled with college students looking for the next big party to defy their parents at,

finding the strength to persevere, knowing that what I would find at the end of my rainbow would greatly outweigh any obstacles I might encounter

and I passed the liquor stores

and I passed the drug stores

and I passed a Father/Son Blacksmith shop (which particularly intrigued me)

and I passed an unkept furniture shop which made me think of where i might find a typewriter as i was in dire need of one tonight

and I passed the streetlights, jaywalking any time I could but being wary of the lights in the sky, seemingly getting consistently farther away as I moved towards them

still taunting me with their alternating individuality of moving away from each other and unifying for 2.2 seconds before breaking up again

and I passed great fences and terrible looking streets that I felt I’d like to explore some other day

and my father on the phone with me said “Its probably some kind of premiere, son”

and my wide-eyed optimism disagreed completely, giving me the notion that the soul of city lay just beyond the next street until i came upon the next street to find that the soul of the city in fact lay beyond the alley after that

and I passed out in my mind, running solely on obsessive compulsive steam heat powered by my plagued mind

and as I reached Fort Lowell, 5 or 6 miles from my starting point, I realized that the lights were not any closer and that the ground was glass beneath me, providing an outlet for the soul of the city

which was hidden beneath the laundromats and catastrophic skyscrapers

to peek through, but never re-enter the human world.

I knew the soul of the city to be dead, destroyed, gone, and i was in fact the only to have seen this apparition, which hardly surprised me having just read an essay on the multitudes of visions writers such as Burroughs and Ginsberg had

yet disturbed me all the same, for the epiphany came that the city in which I had immersed myself, in which I had spent my formative last 8 years, had no soul, no soul at all, and I absolutely refuse to live out my days alone in a city without a soul and the truth that the lights in the sky consoled me no more for the loss of this city’s spirit than a Ground Zero memorial in the Big Apple would make up for the haunting distress of 911

they’re just lights all of them just lights

and the thought is there but they’re just lights

don’t you get it? Can’t you see? The lights won’t bring them back

the lights won’t make the spirit arise or relive this city’s glory days in the public eye when John Dillinger sought refuge here or Everett Ruess traveled on horseback and was slain in the Apache desert

and the lights are just getting in my eyes now as I look East across the Hudson Bay from here-I swear I can see it!-and I see a kinship in the disillusioned New Yorkers but at the same time I feel they’ve got a soul who carries a rusty torch

but this void of a town in which I make my way is no more than a vast emptiness that fools a million people but not me

and I’m going to leave

not tonight

not tomorrow

but soon enough in the grand scheme of things

and to all of my dissenters who ask what makes me think I’ll be happier somewhere else

I’ll smile and have them read this

and save myself the intoxicating satisfaction of knowing I’m the only Tucsonian who saw the light, the dead light

and that light, my love, is no metaphor.

II

When I hear my voice on the phone’s recorder

I realize that its probably more accurate that I give it credit for

but I wish it wasn’t

although thats not what concerns me right now, its these visions!

Ah! Visions! Ah! Visions of Alex! Visions of Everything! Visions of Nothing because I have never SEEN anything persay in these visions but they come, they come like fire in my ears and in my nose and I can feel them flow through my body like my metallic blood that I’ve drawn from the scab I can’t stop picking at these days

Ah! Visions!

Like in San Francisco a city I’m genuinely convinced is magic, a center for it

much like Ireland or Atlantis or Fincayra

a hub if you will

Ah! Visions though, I must return from my tangent!

In San Francisco the city of magic I laid in my hostel bed in the third floor of the Pacific Tradewinds Backpacking hostel high on good West Coast weed the employee at the front desk Mary had smoked me out with

and I laid in the dark, my mind flowing with thoughts of my Beatific heroes and Rimbaud, who I’d been reading that day

when the sound of the lord of the universe came to my ears and I began to fear for my life and I saw the light in the darkness this time not a cynical death of a light

and I heard it I heard the vision Ah!

And I knew that if I kept my eyes closed a second longer I’d see Him whoever this creator was and maybe it would be just me or maybe it would be God but either way I’d see him

but I opened them because I wasn’t sure what was happening

and as soon as I opened them the sound disappeared and I was lying in my bed alone in the dark and I regretted what I had done because I could have seen the universe!! But I was not meant to at the time.

That was the first of my visions.

Now I hear sounds on my roommate’s prescription adderall which I probably should not have taken although I did at the beginning of this poem, this piece mind you

PROSE POEM PERHAPS

and I hear the sounds of drilling

yet they have now left too

and with this realization, this vision of the death of Tucson I have seen tonight

I realize I am meant for something

I have questioned it greatly as of late, wondering if I am like Lennon who knew at a young age he would be all he became

and now I know I am not wrong

I have important things to do

I do not seek fame

I seek fulfillment of my highest potential

with my influence from the Beat and the Music of the World

and I wish to create my movement and affect lives

and I shall! I know I shall! Ah! Vision!

Ah!

AH! VISIONS OF DIAMONDS AND KEYBOARDS AND TYPEWRITERS AND LIVES TO BE CHANGED AND FAME ALTHOUGH I DO NOT SEEK IT ALTHOUGH I KNOW IT WILL COME TO ME AS I AM COMING TO ME RIGHT NOW WITH THIS REVELATION OF THE TIMES!

ah! Fulfillment!

III

I’m leaving now

Goodbye

Au Revoir

For another day

We shall interact on a deeper consciousness

In another dimension

and with harmoniums singing our song

we will embrace in love and the ocean will crash around us

but we won’t get wet

at all