Broken Guitar Strings.

Here I sit, watching cars and people drift by, as I record these lines

 Uttered from the mouths of people passing by my humble little cardboard shack

“This is neither the time, nor place to worry about the state of our economy

And f*** the environment, what has it ever done for me?”

As strings strummed from a battered black six string guitar,  

 Played by a hobo who is sitting on the bustling street corner

Flow through me, carrying my essence in enchanting waves down the crowed street, across green farm lands, through brown sandy deserts and above wide blue oceans to a lustrous jungle deep in the Amazon.

Untouched by human hands, exotic birds colored like the rainbow, sing their joyous songs

As the trees sway in the calm humid air.

Is this what is heaven is like?

Days come and days go.

Years are an eternal bliss, when beauty lives outside the control of man

Nothing is meant to last forever, or so they- the ever wise philosophers say.

As the worn guitar strings, slowly snap one by one- Twang.

The day came when the strings were no more; - the mysterious music came to a sudden halt

As the air was filled with a new voice, drowning out the song of the exotic birds,

While it puffed dirt and smog, into the shuddering trees,

Calling forth the plows, saws and bulldozers

To take this paradise away.

A hand shook my shoulder,

A voice said “Come on old man; let’s get you to a shelter.”

“The music, what happened to the guitar music?” I asked.

“You mean the old hobo who played the battered black guitar?”

“Yes him, what the hell happened to him, why doesn’t he play no more?”

“He died last year, when they tore down that old music hall on that corner,

It was quite a controversy, being a quote on quote possible antique building and all.

I’m surprised you don’t know this old man, where have you been all this time? - On a drug trip?

Ha-I’m just kidding you old man – no seriously where have you been?”

“I was in Paradise” I said firmly, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Where? What did you say?”

Straightening my back and jutting my chin out, I looked him squarely in the eyes and screamed:

“In Paradise and I want to go back there now!”

‘What paradise, you call this rat hole that you’re living in a ‘Paradise’?

I swear, after a certain age, people become senile. Get a life old man.

Grabbing his plaid long sleeve shirt, I said: “I got one and I truly know what living is.

Do you?”

 With a huff the ignorant young man replied: “I’m too busy living and I don’t have time for any of your philosophical nut-cracker ravings.

Have a nice life, old man.”

With that he tore his arm from me and scurried away

Into the rain soaked city, that never sleeps.

Walking back into my now moldy soaked shelter

I sit and try to regain the paradise that has been stolen from me.

As a voice whispers in the wind:

The guitar man strums no more

His time has come and gone

But if you listen closely 

You can still hear the song

Of his enchanting music

 in those he left behind.