I'm no fucking Steppenwolf. Or perhaps that's exactly who I am. Though I yearned for home, the clean and orderly modern city could never provide the warmth and shade necessary to nurture my multitudinous growth. Instead, it's been violently hacking me to pieces for forty years.
See the killers lean backwards gleefully kicking thin, black, pointed legs, as they press skinny buttocks and white hands heavily down on his polished coffin lid. As he lies subdued, breathless and broken beneath.
Grimly satisfied, the leering falseteeth Gormanghastly monsters see him finally planted in Potter's Field. They lean grinning on their shovels. Licking thin lips. Savouring sweet victory over the broke-backed inarticulate boy. Who for sure was nothing, afterall.
"School teaching has been impossible for a long time. Sixth form college teaching was still possible. Now sixth form college teaching is impossible", said his hangdogtired union comrade one lunchtime.
And now university teaching is impossible.
It's over. There's nowhere to run.
Added to which. He learnt today he has no concept of permanence. Can't be sure he can do again what he did yesterday. Or you're the same one he was with. Each day he must summon the energy to fashion first love anew in a time and space of his own making.
With a child's heart, there's only and always the now. Everlasting. Burning. Pater's cold, hard gemlike flame.
Only ever as good as his last performance, he steps out one last time to make his proud, death-defying high-wire walk far above the cartoon craning necks and open mouths.
Enough. He's had enough.
Please release me. Let me go.
For I don't love you anymore.
Goddamn, you're looking old. So old he remembers the poor man's Tom Jones.
The boy who is nothing is tempted to take his finger out and flood the whole miserable world. Let the fuckers drown, he snaps, and stomps off.
