Orange Blossoms and Blue Eyes

I miss Blue Eyes today. And Brown Eyes. Two of my closest gal friends from Florida. They are both prevalent in my poetry from different periods of my life,

Brown Eyes and I last saw each other last Hallowe'en. Though we were calling it Samhain, which is pronounced in the very unlikely manner of SOW-in. I got lost on the trail, without a flashlight. Then I saw her, in the dark, her light and her two friends, and I met them on the road. I called out for Brown Eyes, and she answered that she'd forgot I called her that. I hadn't. We walked over sand through the beautiful star lit night. I got so drunk as I have never been before or since. And I spoke poetry and told myth. I told the story of CuChullain, and how he refused to die as ordinary men do, and tied himself to a standing stone so that he could enter the next world on his feet. And I recited Yeats. And then Wise Man, one of my own, and Irene, paying me the highest praise, called me a bard.

Irene, another friend, more like a sister than anything, and I painted our faces with blue in the Druidic style of looping La Tene lines and curves. Whether real Druids ever did this or not is of little use to us. It feels true to the Druid heart in the same way that the Myths do, true in a way that reality could never be.

Lulu led us in ritual, stoking the fire, speaking with strange voice, while Charles, Shane, and I and the rest looked on in awe as the flame danced for her. While she whispered in one side of our ears, and then the other, two wild boars began to fight in the underbrush. We gave them their space, as boars can and will kill humans, and they gave us, grudgingly, ours. And we played with it. Reality thinned, the veils opened, and the dead came to witness our revels.

And I... Irene, Charles, and I... All of us that knew Jacob, finally said our farewells and sent him on into Elysium or the Hallowed Lands. Tír na nÓg, the Isle of Apples, Heaven, Valhalla or wherever his soul doth choose to reside. But by God, that man deserves to rest in the heavens next to the heroes of antiquity, shining in the night sky...

Brown Eyes and I talked long hours into the night and parted in the morning. I was drunk, hung over, and aching, finding it hard to walk in the oppressive heat of the early November morning, and no longer stoned, but I broke camp with Nick and I left there with a joyous memory in my heart.

And Blue Eyes? Blue Eyes... One of the closest friends I've ever had. And the inspiration for one of my best liked poems:

Blue Eyes, Pink Lips


I can still remember the cold autumn air
and the night that we met at the beach.
I was too bold, the water too cold,
You, just a little too far out of reach.

I can see the sun rising over the waves,
Another time on Brevard County's coast.
And, when memory slips, I can still feel your lips
and the kiss that I cherish the most.

I can remember the distinct shade of pink
of the gloss you were wearing that night.
And for one moment 'never' felt like forever
And, Oh, how you seemed to radiate light.

It wasn't my first, and it wasn't the last
But in my dreams, it's the one I'm reliving.
And if every kiss was like our fist kiss
Life would be a lot more worth living.

Clinton L Williams II
28 January 2008

It recounts our meeting, and the day I first kissed her. It remains one of the best kisses I've ever recieved, though recently, another Blue Eyed girl has given that kiss a run for it's money.

I knew Blue Eyes during one of the most Film Noir-ish periods of my life, trenchcoated and nihilistic. But I miss that. I miss her. I miss, today, my Florida friends and my Florida life. I miss orange groves and palmettos and hookah lounges. God forgive me, I miss the drugs, and the way they amplified life, and made it more epic in the moment. Made everything painted in brighter colors, and more vibrant hues.

And the Ocean, and all the gods and spirituality that therein reside for me. I miss that, as well.

I start group tomorrow. I missed yesterday. I'll talk more soon.

And if you see Blue Eyes, don't tell her that I loved her.

Out of the House of Bedlam

"These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam."
  -from Visits To St. Elizabeths by Elizabeth Bishop

Institutionalised is the one place that I was most likely to end up that I thought I'd never be. Lucky for me, I wasn't in very long. But just long enough, just long enough...

In the home resides a man who cannot help but run his mouth, and spews whatever offal there resides at all who pass, all who would sit to share a coffee. I don't drink coffee, strictly a tea man, but in the home there is no tea. Maybe I should've been hospitalised in Britain...

In the home resides a hunchbacked crone, speaking random words and things that sound like half-truths and riddles. She sat near me at my table, where I was busy inventing a card game, and proceeded to almost make sense. She would smile the small smile of a soul with a secret and look up at me from under raised eyebrows with eyes that shone too bright for the rest of her withered ancient frame and speak nonsense things that I desperately wanted to be intelligible truths. Then she would ask me to define "Amoeba" and the location of EPCOT, for weren't there one to the north? and the spell would break and once again I would be not in some Arthurian romance talking to the withered crone, the witch, who could reveal soul-shattering truths to me if only I had ears to listen and the mind to puzzle them out... No longer there, but in the home, the House of Bedlam, the Vista Hospital, where the most that had happened all day was the steady commentary of the turtles that we could watch mate for hours upon end from the windows we passed on the way to the cafeteria.

A young man, R. we'll call him, got out on my first day and was back on my last, wearing scrubs this time instead of street clothes...

It was a very sad and strange place to me, and I am glad to be out. Now I have to see a group all day twice weekly for at least the next 60 days, whaich I am unhappy of. I have no desire to be in a hospital setting again so soon! But, the program is going to help me get back to school this fall. Everyone seems hopeful of my asperations of a professorship, and intent to help me achieve it, so I'll go. Thorazine tablets in pocket I'll go, back unto the maw of madness, back into the House of Bedlam, back to where the lines of the world faded and reality thinned for me...

I'll go.

Welcome to the carnival

I'm Clint. I've also been known as Buddy, John, Liam, the MacDraiocht, and a host of other aliases and names only some of which are repeatable in polite company. To paraphrase my favourite author, I'm dogged, determined, and probably damned and a whole lot of other things that start with the letter D.

I'm something of an underachiever. A gifted child whofailed highschool for lack of attempt, and then scored the fourth highest score in the state on my GED. I'm a little older now, but no wiser, and trying to get back to school.

I've been published. Twice as an adult, once as a child, and at least one more scheduled to appear in print. My current publisher, Gatehose Gazette, only know me as Clinton L Williams II. So I guess that'll work here too. The poem they are yet to publish is about one of the most amazing women I've ever met, if one reads between the lines.

I'm a bit of a bear of a man, with my friends constantly making the metaphor more and more complex with the retelling. Apparently they all see it. Was a time I thought I was the only one.

I've been ordained as a priest, trained as a Druid, journeyed as a shaman, partook of Santeria, delved into chaos magic, and am a Discordian in my heart. I'm still a Christian. Just of a different sort than you may be. And I'm almost positive the entire universe is an elaborate illusion, and probably digital.

I've been stabbed, threatened, chased, prodded, beaten, choked, drugged, liquored up and cursed with a family history of every damned illness you can imagine, but with mental disorders a specialty.

And I'm a romantic. It's the ocean in me, I believe. Or maybe the Irish. But I'm on a basically unending quest for love. And I've yet to find a girl that I'm postive won't break my heart. But I'm trying.

And I'm my own worst enemy.

And now you're starting to know me.

--Clint