one-night-run (but it really took years)

there was the time I got lost in another country and three whatifs crashed into me as that awful car sped away.

i caught the first whiff of your signature scent

somewhere outside cleveland after dusk

there was a certain twang to your essence

not unlike a tense guitar string screaming

quietly with finger picking precision back

in the lounge car with the other passengers

one window looks out into our ignorance

a rooftop is always in play,

the Thunder Carrot, the Pixie, the Triplets

of Railville come alive past midnight

there is no singing this time around

but there are spirits lifted, raised

like a glass of wine, a shot of vodka,

a splash of that cheap whiskey

while we all drink to the next stop

there was another time when I was riding in the back of a VW bus while the couple who owned it argued up front. that was somewhere in the eastern seaboard, south of DC if my memory serves me right.

which it usually doesn't,

like the time when your hard edges caught the small of my knee as i rounded the corner trying to find my way out of another senseless night, out of another bed, out of this clever combination of evasion and want. tell me, are we really this stuck up in our own fears that we cannot abide to accept? i sometimes drown in your ocean and it is the most beautiful, but lonely death i can imagine.

a bruise for every time she smiles at you from across the way
or how she will never leave a mark, a scar, something written
on the skin only meant for that awkward moment
between the two, and the three, and all the others waiting in the shade, in the alley
at the bus stop the following morning, cuando la luz se te cruza en el camino

alright, i'll wait for the time to expire and reset all the weird ways in which you decide to unknow me all over again, apply pause, that tiny, breathless moment when i open my eyes and find myself sinking in you, hiding within your doubts, and holding on to your mistakes as if they were my own,.

i'll meet your bluest eye

with my whitest lie

and raise you the blackest night

not quite beyond the pale

they said,

why do they bow to the reddest moon

you wondered

is this your yellow trick road?

i shoulda known the grass is always greener

by then it all comes together and becomes one more lesson to ponder in bed while the cat scratches at the door. i can never tell if he's trying to get in or out, and then it dawns on me the cat is not really a cat.

and then finally, there was the time nobody knew how to start all over again. and we all did what we thought we were expected to, drink a little more, stare across the bay, the harbor, or whatever body of water keeps us apart, and wonder if we left right now we might just be able to make the last train back to …nowhere.

it will all end soon enough, maybe even

after we’ve become the ruins of what we're looking for;

a dangling body, a swinging sentence,
 a quiet moment between the cars
where solitude is the undisputed king
of games not finished before our ultimate destination.

so this is how you describe that hollowness

so this is the best i can do

so this how my road unravels in your back country