I surprised myself yesterday evening that even after all these years — these decades — I still weep when this song plays…
I walked the avenue, ’til my legs felt like stone
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone
And made me recall this memorial of past, gone friends from all those past, gone years:
Victims of the Plague
(for the lost boys)
Perhaps our dances, in a thousand years,
Will patterned be as drums.
Our bright minds, forged by fate,
Will in the musk of eons drown.
Our souls will all rise glorified
As a pod of whales weaves waves.
Our flesh, once firm, relaxed as stones
That serve to mark our graves.
Our pleasures seen as ancient rites
Describable as dreams;
Our voices, in a million years,
Insubstantial as starbeams.
Perhaps our minuets, in a billion years,
Will as steel stiffened be.
Our arabesques as smooth and gestural
As paintings of the sea.
Our nods but inclinations
Of the folds beneath the eyes.
Our plans but vague intentions
Of the winds beneath the skies.
Our breath, a transpiration
Of dust immured in dust.
Our lives, a visitation
Of a rushlight drowned in musk.
Perhaps our words and scattered songs,
May come, in time, to less than naught,
As Mayan blocks of hand hacked stone
Embalm the skin we once sloughed off.
But now, like rattles kept within
A jeweled bone box, our hollowed skin
Is shaken in the center of the park
To frighten schoolboys after dark.
Gerard Van der Leun
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I am sympathetic to loss. I’ve lost many friends and family over the years. That said,, One of the hallmarks of the AIDS epidemic was the normalization of Sodomy and its causes. I feel that homosexual behavior is a response to trauma, usually from childhood. That is the disease. The abuse that causes the behavior. By normalizing the behavior the cause is over looked and depraved psychopaths continue to abuse and traumatize young people. Those are the lost boys and the true tragedy.
An all time favorite of Springsteen’s for me. He has a lot of excellent songs that evoke strong emotions.
One of Tom Hanks’ best performances too.
Never could stand the dood. Or Hanks.
Both, over rated cucks.
“One of the hallmarks of the AIDS epidemic was the normalization of Sodomy and its causes …”
Not exactly true, the normalization came from the reaction to AIDS; that a cure would take precedence over medical research for almost anything else. In the end, at least today, there is no cure but its progression can be slowed or even stopped with ‘cocktails’ of antivirals and other drugs.
Interesting side-note from AIDS to Wuhan Flu: Anthony Faucci. Heading up the CDC’s AIDS task force, for years he prohibited the testing or approval of combined drugs or existing generics that offered hope. Gays who were alive both then and now hate him for watching them die when relief was possible. Sometimes not much changes.
To Gerard’s point, no matter if I morally disagreed with their personal choices, they were people. Human beings of whom many were productive, helpful, caring, and great to talk with. So few are left. Their downfall, the plague, was ignoring Uncle Remus’ wisdom to “stay away from crowds”.