Let's ask Odin

"and I would gladly pay twice the price of Odin for the wisdom to know the truth."

Those words echo at the end of my poem "thirty two feet per second per second", which is also the lyrical base for the composition "32fps2" on my new CD "Amomancer: nightblooming".

The poem was written at a time of great pain, an expression of doubt, of lost love and of the uncertainty of knowing the hearts and minds of others. To most people a broken heart is huge...to me it is both part of the deal for being who and what I am, and a test of survival will.

In Norse mythology Odin, the All-father of the Gods, traded an eye for wisdom. In this poem I offer up that I would "gladly pay twice the price", gladly be blinded, if I had the power to know the true hearts of those I deal with. I am no ingenue, but I want to believe in people so much that often I allow myself to believe better of them than there is, assigning virtues they do not possess and hoping against hope that the flashing red lights and klaxon horns are merely a test of or a malfunction in my warning system.

I've never attempted suicide, never even considered it. Oh, I have joked about it and said I have thought of it, but that is invariably a feeble attempt to communicate with people who do not understand what I am constructed of and for. The raw materials are the same as anyone else, but somewhere along the way, I started playing with my thought processes, started experimenting with my consciousness.

The results are mixed. There are things I am brilliant at. Things I suck, royally, at. I feel things more than most do, I write well, I have insight. But I lack the capacity to chart the grey paths, to walk quietly through this life and accept the cannibalistic mediocrity of modern Western civilization.

And through it all, through all the fire and dung and acid and brimstone, I still believe in God, in the sanctity of sentient life and in love. I treat even those who treat me badly with respect. I sacrifice of myself when it is called for, I accept the apologies of those who have offended me, no matter how cruel or malign their intentions were when they gave offense or how deep they struck. I still give scorpions rides across the river.

I chose this path, the poetic field of blood and carnage and passions and poisons. I would have it no other way. I fell into some of it. Some I experimented to find, exploring corners of my heart and soul that I might find a path unique unto itself and both right and righteous for me. That I have failed many times is an honest truth, well admitted. But I have gotten back up every damn time and walked, sometimes on what seem to be bloody stumps of hope and memory towards an uncertain future.

I am a poet.

Some say THE poet. That is more than a hobby or a career. That is a state of being. I would take that over money or power or fame or the company of others.

But over love?

No. And that is where my damnation lives and lies and dies. That is what, in the end, I would trade both eyes for, the ability to find true love. I have built my golems of broken people and tried to fit archetypes designed to win the heart of angels I have seen hovering in curiosity above the pit in which I dwell. But, in the end, what I seek is more than a good weekend of constant lovemaking, more than my pity on a damaged spirit, more than an appreciation of parallel interests.

I seek the transcendent. Have I found such a person, yet? Perhaps. If so, they just haven't stepped up. It is a rather large thing I ask them to accept, nothing short of a stepping into legend. A few have tried, some have tried to escape, but once you are in, you are part of the story even if guilt or perfidy pulls you out. It is a commitment, an acceptance that the story will be told.

In my memoirs I have said I fulfill the quote I once gave in an interview that "An honest man cannot be the hero of his own memoir". I need to find someone willing to be human in exchange for love and passion and artistry and immortality.

To quote comedienne Stephanie Hodge "Is that so much to ask for?"

Let's ask Odin.