My father was moonstruck at a young age, and though he had a very whimsical soul, he also had great, almost psychic, intuition; in his handwritten journal he foretold the arrival of a dastardly entity at his club, the Comedy Fortress, who would be filled with both a nefariously melancholy demeanor and perversely righteous indignation.

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© 2023 - dustygrein

(Thank you for a great little challenge. Sometimes I create these little random word challenges in poetry, but occasionally I try and see if I can do it all in one sentence... this one worked pretty well.)

And in this melancholy indignation of myself,

I pounce upon the dimness of that whimsical star shimmering down onto me –

basking in the gloriousness

that this nighttime feeling induces in me.

Anything to dastardly cower away from my real intentions;

putting forth the strained effort to pick myself up.

And then,

as if the skies had heard my anguished cries –

I become moonstruck.

Hypnotized.

And like an epiphany,

an intense intuition strikes a chord in me –

as it was foretold,

so long, long ago.

“Be patient,” others had spoken to me.

And I was.

And here it is.

I am locked in a mental fortress, alone with my thoughts.

And I envision that ultimate entity;

that righteous being who will save my life.

And I smile.

For what a comedy it is that I shall be forgiven

after pedaling my feet through the wicked woes of hell.

I think a lot about the lives of others. Each one is their own entity, living a life I will never know.

A melancholy feeling comes over me as I watch them. In a fortress of public life, seemingly unseen.

Sometimes as I sit, people watching, I create whimsical or dastardly stories for each of them.

Maybe they are moonstruck, racing off to a dinner where their sweetheart will get down on one knee.

Or maybe they stomp along, drenched with indignation, furious about a foretold down-size at their job.

Are they righteous, kind, a mother, a criminal?

Sometimes I'm sure my intuition is off, or maybe my imagination and natural comedy is taking over.

But I enjoy these moments. They make me wonder what people guess about my own life.

Dark and foggy, open ocean waves swelling in great boils all around, the great stone fortress is sinking. As had been foretold, so I knew from intuition—therefore I feel no strong emotion against it. No joy, nor melancholy, nor fulfillment, nor indignation fills my heart as I watch the killing waters lap slowly up the walls, eating their way through the rock-solid foundation. I am merely bowed in submission to the fate which befalls the solitary stronghold. Soon all the secrets buried inside will be washed away, drifting down through the dastardly sea—whose swirling currents are cloaked black as night—and disappearing from existence, as if they never were.

I am sinking. Resigned to my sorrows which evaporated long ago, lost in a cloud of gloom which so often blinds the whimsical moonstruck lover whose target gives them no second glance, I offer no resistance. The treacherous waters suck at my foundation, eating it away, slowly rising. Come dying; death awaits.

I raise my lusterless eyes to the East, where the sun nevermore shall rise: “Oh, if there be one righteous being, some divine entity who rules the skies,” I pray, “Then spare me one more day, one more turn of the Earth!”

A glimmer, a glint, and the morning rays break through, golden shafts piercing the night and chasing the darkness away, which flees back into the ocean from which it was born. The waters recede. God is merciful.

Thus I open my eyes that morning, the battle won once again.

I had a bit of a melancholy moment, almost whimsical. Most that know me may think my thought was righteous.

But here I sit, mt place of solitude, which I often call my Fortress of Quiet Land.

And yet, I cannot but help remember what my grandfather foretold when I was a young sapling.

“Let your intuition be your guide. Don’t fritter your time away uselessly and become a moonstruck idiot just because something went your way for a change. Keep after that you feel important. Remember, you are your own entity. No one can distract you from what you set out to accomplish but you. You may get a certain number of people that will try to eviscerate you, laying out their unholiest indignation upon you. I say bastardly dastardly and let them wallow in their own ilk. They know nothing of what you will bring. So smile politely, nod your head, and ruin their brain waves with a bit of comedy. Comedy works like kindness. They have no comeback.”

And tomorrow I will put the naysayers in their own quiet land when I become the first blind man to ski downhill backward singing Ava Maria eating a liverwurst sandwich.