I think I saw and felt
The last spark of my youth
The moment I stepped out of the
Opera Metro station
In Madrid

For a brief few seconds it flickered
The smallness of everything on Spanish streets
The smell of cigarettes smoked indoors
The tiny elevator, so foreign
The ecstasy of new folds on fresh spirit
Pure experience before it becomes decrepit memory

I was 21 again
When I saw cervecerías
Closed for their afternoon siesta
It has been so long
I felt the anticipation of a first drink
A flash of my former self
Less jaded, less bitter
I was going to be a doctor
I had friends again
And this was before they just became drinking buddies
True friends
By the time I entered the apartment i was me again
I sat on the balcony and hoped the feeling would come back
A pathetic starving fisherman
Throwing his line into the long polluted sea
We can never go back, and even if we could
We shouldn’t
we might get glimpses of how we were
The glimpse is what’s good for us
To live in it would make us too soft
I wonder if all memories, good and bad
Are painted in divine rays of light when looked on from afar
A neurobiological trick
To make a sterile hospital deathbed
Or a gory end on the steppe
A tolerable finale
so long as we can think of youth and home

the last lick of flame
Before the smoke comes
Bleeding out like a severed artery

I think this may just be what I tell myself
The times really were that good.