Broken Witch

I was the High Priestess of a counterfeit
coven of one. If you'd press the center
of my soft little heart, I'd fold and snap like
an overused, under-appreciated tentacle.

With ash singed tooth, I'd guard my little
flock of multiple reflections, selfishly.
Six out of seven had spontaneously
vaporized, but I glared them back into
materialization.

I, of the seventh nature, was met
with great opposition. I could not
will myself back into submission.
In desperation, I resorted to a patch-up
job, with bandages and duct tape.

When she told me in her defeated tone,
"My cancer has returned", that's when
everything came undone. I tried seventeen
different mantras and incantations. Then
the dreaded call came through, explaining
how she couldn't beat it. She was gone;
and puff... so was I.

Step Down (Part 3)...finale

Like a gagged and bound songbird; wing clipped and caged,
he held onto himself, clutching back words of emotion towards
me. I tired of this, and it all ended like a bad soap opera, with me
moving to a far off University; suitcase in one hand and his seven
foot painting which he gave to me, in the other.

One night, five years later, I was driving toward my art studio way
up Sunset Blvd. I thought I caught a glimpse of him thumbing a
ride on a street corner. He was wearing a long, black, heavy coat
casting him as a rather striking image. A little later, while
sitting in my studio, settling in for the evening, I saw outside my
large, frosted window that same specter-like, coated shadow,
backlit and silhouetted by the street lamp behind him. His six foot
frame began to jump up to see into a smaller, unfrosted window
above. My former husband grabbed a hammer menacingly and
opened the door, scaring my caped bandit off into the cool, dark,
night. This image of him haunted me through the years, causing
me to feel the bitter tinge of melancholy and remorse. And so a
chapter ended; until now.

As my mind meandered back to the present and into the light of
his great accomplishments, I felt proud of him, yet realized that
he must have had long forgotten us through the thirty year spread
of time.

But suddenly, something caught my eye. It was the name of a
song; my name with the first letter lopped off. It was written only
a year before. I read the description of the woman he wrote it for,
then called my husband in from the other room, and asked him to
read it . He spied the name, read the description and said, "This
is you". I protested due to the enormous time span involved, but
then decided the only way to find out was to purchase the music
and hear it for myself. My name; one not commonly used, would
either be distorted into this more generic form or sung as itself. It
was a mystery I was determined to solve, and while I was on a roll,
I took a brazen step forward and emailed him.

I complimented him on his musical greatness, which I treated my
ears to by running out to a local music store and purchasing one
of his CD's. My email to him was short but very complimentary.
Then I waited for the music, which I had purchased from his
website, to arrive from New York.

After a few days of anxious anticipation, my delivery arrived and in
the package I found, stuffed inside, two extra CD's which he had
sent to me as a gift. He also inserted a small, handwritten letter
which contained a genuine message of warmth. One CD had
just been released within a couple of days of my emailing him.
On it I saw the same song title with the name abbreviation as the
one I had purchased. It was on this new recording that I heard, in
amazement, my name pronounced as clear as day, over and over
again. I screamed as a first reaction. Thirty years later, and I
realized it all had meant something after all. I had not been
forgotten! A feeling of redemption and revelation came over me.

The next thing I did was check back on the internet to see if he
would be in concert soon, and if he was, when and where.

I had a two month wait before the L.A. concert; and in nervous
anticipation, I didn't know what to expect. Who would I be
meeting that night? Which one of his flip sides would I encounter;
the warm, soft hearted self, or a steely eyed, dart throwing stranger?
The wait to find out felt like an eternity. I wanted to have this
experimental encounter on my own. But my husband would have
none of this, and insisted on escorting me, as he feared an
unpredictable and dangerous road ahead. He felt I might be
slipping away into the murky waters of my far distant past, as I
appeared to be living in a multi-dimensional reality.

We pulled up early into the parking lot where the concert was to
take place. By sheer coincidence, two of his band members came
bouncing out of the car next to us. I recognized them by the photo's
I had seen. I slipped one of them a small handwritten note which
explained my presence in the audience; and I had signed it on the
bottom. I asked if he would please give it to him. The gentleman said
O.K.; but as he walked away reading the note to himself, he stopped
dead in his tracks, turned around, and with a wry smile, asked me,
"Where do you know him from"? Upon explanation of time and place,
yet giving no details of anything more than being an old friend, he
practically skipped away like a kid having just discovered buried
treasure. He obviously recognized the name.

Outside the concert doors, there was quite a long wait before we
were let in. The crowd began to congregate. The air was buzzing
with individual chatter; expressing awe and admiration for
this man. All they knew of him personally was what he wrote and
sang about; a life of tortured experiences and mangled love affairs;
which he had dangled and waltzed in front of his publics gapping
mouths. They ate up every piece and shred of whatever personal,
intestinal offerings he was willing to chuck out at them; a feeding
frenzy which he gladly offered up. It was all part of the gig...a piece
of his so called uncompromising scheme to bestow the hard, true
facts of the life of an underground, "musical genius," as had been said
of him by endless critics. He was his publics icon and they groveled at
his feet. So I was determined to meet with this king of in-your-face
dissention and revolt, look him in the eye, and have us both
remember a quieter time when just plain human was a word which
pertained to both of us.

His appearance had changed considerably. A life hard lived had taken
its toll. The energetic spirit of his once young body was not in the
room that night, and appeared to have left him for good. It was as
though he had survived by a thread and was still standing just long
enough to tell about it. I felt moved by the vision of this survivor.
Through the long years, I had wondered if he was even still alive;
and here he was standing before me. But I was invisibly hidden in a
sea of faces.

When the song was sung; my song, he mouthed the words all the way
through. I couldn't hear a thing. He knew of my presence there, and
this was what I got. I felt insulted and blacklisted. An old anger
welled up inside of me. It was an outrage! Then I knew which side of
the coin I would be encountering on this night; and I wanted to flee.

After the final encore and all were heading up the aisles and out the
doors, I waited for him to emerge from back-stage to greet me.
Nothing! I saw the same musician who I had handed the note to
earlier, and politely requested a visit from what now appeared to be
a disappearing stranger. The musician had a completely transformed
aura about him. Now he was dark and sullen. Then he disappeared
back stage and I never saw him again. I realized that I was unwanted
there and that my X just did not want to see me. I was just an
unfinished footnote in his life after all. He had spit me out in the
form of a song in order to tie up a loose end for himself. Why he
waited so many years to do it; only he knew the answer to that.

Then suddenly he appeared like a dark, ghostly apparition at the back
of the stage. He was stooping over, picking up electrical chords and
getting ready to take down the instruments. I walked cautiously up to
the edge of the stage and whispered his name. Slowly he crept
toward me like a dead man walking, with eyes casting a cold, blank
stare. As he reached the edge of the stage, he raised a limp, boneless
hand and dangled it at me for a formal, emotionless hand shake. In
detached, robotic fashion, he then said, "Very nice to see you, thank
you for coming". I proceeded to thank him for the music he had sent
and explained how much I was enjoying it. It was a cordial,
mechanical exchange. Then I decided to do what most would
think was unthinkable. I asked if I could give him a hug. By this time
my husband had stepped to the back of the concert hall, knowing I
needed to revisit and close this unfinished chapter of my past. He
witnessed the event from afar. The next thing I did was ask him to
step down off the stage, because I was not going to step up there to
him. I thought to myself, "Step down to the size of one man's heart".
He obliged by saying, "O.K., after twenty-seven years". He obviously
miscalculated the time span by a little; but I knew exactly how long
it had been. After a brief but gentle embrace, he looked deeply into
my eyes and showed utter recognition. He then relaxed his stoic
stance, cocked his head to one side, and surrendered his external
facade over to the human heart I'd been looking for, and hadn't seen
a glimmer of all that night. He had now given way to genuine
compassion, and I was rejoicing in it's glorious resurrection.
Then with pleading, velvet blue eyes, he asked, "How are you really?
Are you happy?" With this he began to blush. As his face turned to
crimson red, and his smile grew to a luminous, cresent glow, I
realized that this was my personal encore for the night. I saw for
a brief moment, in a place frozen in time, the youthful face of a
boy I once knew long ago; and I understood why he wrote a song
thirty years too late.

I suddenly felt lack of oxygen. It was my time to leave. Our chapter
was now finally finished and at peace. I would never again look back
at our past with the feeling of unease. We bid our farewells and I
turned quickly to join my awaiting husband; up the path of the
concert isle. As we walked out the door and into the crowd, I
could hear the chatter and buzz of the fans still excited by
the great performance they had just experienced. I had a buzzing
sensation of my own; but mine was from a performance which had
just taken place, of a far different and greater nature than theirs.

Step Down (Part Two)

As I read on, attempting to spread my comprehension across
his panoramic, twenty-five year career, my mind began to filter
back to the early days of when we first had met.

I first spotted him entering the room of my life drawing class in
college. He was tall with piercing blue eyes, but with a troubled,
almost menacing expression. There was a focused intensity to
his persona which I hadn't witnessed before in such a young
man. He was only twenty years of age at the time. With slightly
slouching shoulders, he'd carelessly move through space, with
deliberate intent toward his destination, wherever that might be.
One knew instinctively not to cross his invisible, electrified field.
Others in the class were instantly drawn toward his exceptional
intelligence, which would manifold through his drawings and later
could be seen in all other visual medias he pursued. But no one
could compliment him because no one could slip by his wide,
intentionally set boundaries, as he showed a distinct distain
toward most of the human race. Even the teachers shied away.
He would bolt into the classroom early, prop his large drawing
board upright against the platform which the nude model of the
day was sitting or standing on, and block the view of other
students arriving into the classroom after him. Sometimes,
someone would draw up enough courage to ask him to please
move over a little so that they might see the model. He would
only bark back, "Too bad, if you want to see, you should get here
earlier and pick a better spot." I found this all rather amusing
and would smirk to myself as I was quite the little rebel myself
in those days; although I could never match him in his
brazenness nor would I wish to.

Then came the day of the class picnic. It was a beautiful Southern
California day at a park near the beach. Everyone from class was
there, except of course for him. But then, after a while, he
unexpectedly came bounding up out of nowhere with a girl
of small size and stature, very similar to mine, balanced on top
of his shoulders. I was amazed to see another human being
that close to him, let alone on him. He ignored everyone else but
her. He played with her and manipulated her like a spider
monkey. Then in a carefree fashion he'd run this way and that,
all the while cradling and tucking her into his ribcage, possessing
her like a football for touchdown. I remember moving away from
all the others, and staring at them like a spy. I couldn't take my
eyes off of them. It was embarrassing. "What's gotten into me", I
thought to myself. I felt jealous of this girl, over a boy I hardly
knew. I had never been the aggressor over any man before. I
never needed to. But this was different. I wanted to be in this girls
place. I wanted him like I wanted nothing else.

And so, a few days after the picnic, I made the bold decision to
step into his world and ask him out; and he accepted. As it turned
out, the little spider monkey girl was brutal by nature and was on
her way out of his life anyway. I happily helped him exit a bad
affair; and nothing could have been better for me; or so I thought.

I became mentor, friend and lover; but only in measured
increments, as he would so often evaporate into his own dark,
troubled world of hidden drug abuse and the more obvious,
oppressive battles with his own inner demons. His young life
had been filled with loss and sadness which provoked constant
questioning of anything good in it. I was the good in his life which
made me his nemesis. When we were quiet and alone, he would
fold and collapse his hardened facade, pulling us deep into the
abyss of the center of his soul. But away from my presence, his
monster would resurrect and thrive, so that I'd have to bide my
time and wait for his humanity to resurface and beat back the
devilish beast.

Step Down (Part One)

It is said, that if you gaze long and hard into the ball of a
black obsidian, you may open secret passages leading
to the center of your subconsciousness; rattling and disrupting
suppressed fears and causing forgotten memories to re-emerge
and haunt the moral fiber or your soul.

As I recently found out, a computer screen can act as a similar
kind of conduit; akin to the black obsidian. I typed into a web
search the name of a young man I had known long ago; someone
I had wished to consider long forgotten. It was a rather thoughtless,
frivolous act; like dropping a penny into a cheap gum ball machine.

The last time he and I communicated was thirty years prior. But the
last I heard of him was twenty years back on a radio station playing
his music. This surprised me at the time, as I knew him in art school
where we were both visual artists and he had no musical inclinations
whatsoever. When I first heard his music it was like noise by the
pound; a bunch of tortured shrieks and screams. I was lost to what
he was doing or why he was doing it. So, I was utterly amazed and
shocked when his name appeared filling up the whole entire list of
names on my computer screen. I started clicking page after page
and each one was equally devoured by his presence. When I
reached page seventy-five and saw it was again filled up with his
name accompanied by rave reviews and some in foreign languages
which I could barely decipher, I stopped clicking forward and decided
then to settle in for a long, dizzying night of reading about my old
flame of years gone by. I didn't realize that there would be a surprise
in store for me, beyond my wildest imagination.

Just a quick note to all who so kindly stops by. I'm finishing up a story which will be posted in segments.
It will be up in the very near future. Thanks to everyone who checks in. boulies