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21.1.14

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