Archival

it's never easy

to keep people out of

the stock footage

inside your brain

that brain,

by the way,

always trying

very hard

to turn everything

you see

feel

experience

into your own personal little

you-tube

what you want

what you

need to

feel to make it all matter

this is

about

one

person

who is not me

and i will never be him

and the stock footage

instructs and

dumbfounds more than soothes

he spent his

life

stubbornly in pursuit

of a life

he could not make

but in trying to make it

he made

a life

and that life

can't be validated

any other way

outside of

a sort of respect

you can't

explain

you can't verify or

even

compute

you can't joke about it

either because it was

his joke

first he wanted to be a

clown

and clowns are

well

they are clowns

second

he wanted

to be a construction-worker

but he never got to go there

and in all his years and

in everything he

left behind

he became his own

spectacular ghost

even while

alive

and he haunts

me right now

without one word

without

spookiness

just this emotion

i can't

unscramble

or detail

this is about

him and what is left of him

that's all i got

Link to Raymond's archive: http://raymondthundersky.org/archive/