Proud Titania

He takes a long drag and all I see are embers and red eyes. Hold, then exhales, two streams of magic dragon-breath through his nostrils as he lifts the cold can of Pabst to dry lips in one fluid motion. The growing dusk blankets us like fog but we keep chilling, unwilling to take the party indoors.

My mind races and reels, torrents of flickering distortions fed into my skull. I’m thinkin’ maybe I shouldn’t have taken two tabs of acid. Perhaps I’m thinkin’ I may be too old for hallucinogenic mind fucks… after all I’ve always said acid is a young man’s drug, but I dropped anyway against my better judgment. Cool breeze, a midsummer night’s dream. Old Door’s tape in the boom box filling the night air and I can see the music swirl about, drifting higher and higher into the sky, and I reach out my hand to try and hold the organ and the guitar and the thick purple crayon bass lines, but the elusive ripples dissipate to my touch.

I remember seeing you there sitting by the fire, dark eyes gazing out to the ocean. I remember asking you what you were thinking about, hypnotized by your black hair… watching your skin breathe, careful not to fall into a pore. “ Tuzik, why are you so sad?” And I remember you turned to me and smiled, “Not sad sweetie, just thinking about home.” And I answered: “but I’m right here.”

“I wish it were that easy,” you sigh… and I feel a great melancholy fill my heart, which is now sealed in glass and tossed about haplessly in the waves. Like some Dutch boy popped his finger out of the dyke with a defiant snarl and now I’m drowning, the waves smother me as I claw at the surface unable to breathe for I know the future holds absolutely nothing for us except tragedy.

I turn and stumble, reaching out my hands to catch myself, and walk back to my circle of friends who toss about the footbag, the “sipa,” transfixed by the tracers following the intricate flight patterns… I smile and hum Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee.