Before the Invention of Photography

What time held that clarity, standing outside the door, waiting with a smile because there was no other reason? What time, indiscriminate in its abuse of the possible, where perception and meaning were in conflict and resolution, where his lack of distance, his distorted experience, were all still forgiven?

He walked into the dimly lit room, aroma of old Boston where the dusty rose light of decades shadowed the unread leather-bound books. Walked into the room where those on leave from confinement spoke in the poetic alliterations swept up and passed from handshake to poolroom handshake.

Who had he talked with, Bickfords mirrored walls of safety? Who had his back when all he wanted was a moment’s relief, winter cold to summer heat and a return?

He walked into the dimly lit room, aroma of old Boston where an old man of unknown origin slowly melted from the feet up, as if the hardened sugar of his life had turned to blood and betrayed him, all kissing him on the head in homage to a genetic tradition.

What time held that clarity, waiting for late night trains and hearing the squeal of wheels entering Harvard station? Did anyone read his graffiti, subway philosophy in the crude graphic of a disordered mind? If only he could write in English.

He walked into the dimly lit room, aroma of old Boston where dark haired girls he would have loved fixed there lipstick, where “A Love Supreme” set his aesthetic, where a pocket poet be-bop wordsmith formed the rhythm and cadence of his stutter.

He walked into the dimly lit room, sometime before the invention of photography, sometime when a subtle guitar’s melody captured the tones and textures to be forgotten later in a time when clarity was a permanent present.