I was young when I left home.

I was young when I left home. Flora and Fauna, time to change, return to Jesus. Sat in a house with a lime tree around the corner. I had to listen up, the wind wasn't talking as much as it used to.

I made the most of what I had, out on the road, eating nothing but rice and tomato sauce, so there'd always be plenty of money for booze. I didn't like it in the end. I wanted to go back home, but I was scared of how much had changed. I never kept updates; time is like a shoe string and it's easy to find again, no matter where it's been left.

I found a compass that had no practical application, but served as a great reminder of 'away'. I wanted to find a small shack, out in the country, I wanted to be alone for a while - it didn't happen in the end, but gee, I was alone for a while. This was the most depressing, the time in solitude wasn't self inflicted, it was pain.

I picked up my staff, made of earth, I started to cry. But the tears never showed, not in the rain. A single note droned on a piano, like the introduction to the news. I missed the music we had made, being left alone to create a symphony from a single talent - a one man band.

Collecting strangers and strange attitudes, I became forgotten to myself and, in turn, a stranger. My name had changed and adapted its own person. I needed healing. I left Jesus sitting in the back seat of my Dad's work truck; I said I'd leave the radio on so he wouldn't get bored. Three months later, the battery had gone dead and Jesus wasn't waiting there any more.

I stood in front of the ocean, in the middle of the night, smoking cigars with a friend who I was missing. He knew me before I became someone else. He talked and I was happy to listen, even though I was still so far away, separated by my new name's persona. A little abstract, being gone, but at home.

The look of the days changed, things became still, well illuminated and covered in a blanket of blue sky, flowers opening into spring. But the wind still didn't stir.

I slept behind the lounge of my parent's apartment. The neighbour was a drummer. He practiced after his night shifts. Any change of dreaming new things was thwarted by his talent. My itching feat hid in leather, the light teased them, so I spent most of the day in bed.

I went to a hill-top, more of a cliff, overlooking the sea. The still air became wind. Jesus was sitting on a park bench. He asked me where I had been. The conversation rolled on, but I soon worked out he wanted to be talking to the person I was no longer being. Again, he asked me where I had been. He gave me a lift back home.

jf.x