I held a spoonful close to my mouth
Sips of whatever I had coming again
Tightly packed for a business trip
In a car with four doors
Fingertips and a medicine bottle
And a spoon held for too long.
Take me down a river road
Cottonwoods and wheeping willows
Blowing in the wind
Long lamented tailwind signaled
Our swift departure – forward
With an essence upon my lips
Holding on to my silver moon.
I woke up nowhere fast
Speedball to Portugal
A painful memory state
Sin on my mother name
Let’s make a peaceful game
Nineteen seventy eight
Luxury automobile
And I am filled with golden rays of sun
Nurturing my breastfeeding heart
So I didn’t check my baggage
Left my panties in my purse
Kept the door behind me open
And kissed deeply.
– afterthought –
The man I left I had become
On the road and in my head
Aeroplane has come again
Touchdown I’m not the same.
Stir my cesspool of random thoughts
That hold each of my ears wide
Collecting bits of random chaos;
Ricochet through a knotty web
Like the tangled mass hairs on my head
Have spun about my brain;
Shift my gears into 5th
As we barrel down a dirt road at midnight
With the lights cut.
There was no moon at midnight
And my road was clambering on
I saw what appeared to be shadows
But from what direction I could not see the source
Nor could I understand their movement
For my breath was beating strongly
Inside my mind that couldn’t sit still.
They say whenever you’re lonely
To hug a tree in the woods,
That everything will be better
Once you listen to the wind through leaves.
But my footsteps weren’t taking me there
My trees were full of eyes
That growled when I got too close
My fire had died down to a whisper
Which danced away upon every breath
That beat so wildly inside.
I tried turning my back to the fire
So I could let my eyes adjust to darkness
Cold dampness swept into my chest
That left my fingers clinching at the dirt
I sat cross-legged on ash
That was surely trying to make it’s way
Up the inside of my leg
Like slowly crawling worms
With no direction home.
My fingers felt like dust
Long gone into a night with no end.
Slowly my eyes began to make out a hue of indigo
Through the trees that crept ever closer
With a faint scent of a silhouette
That began to sing me a song
Reminding me of Joan Baez singing acapella
Which always led me to Bob Dylan
And one of his nearly alarming harmonica solos.
Stars began to blink at me
Through gusting fog that sped
As fast as the dying harmonica sounds.
I could begin to see markings
Upon the bark of the nearest Douglas Fir trees
Bark so thick that my hands impulsively
Rubbed each other
Acutely feeling dusty skin on the back of my hands
As life began to seep back into them,
Shocked one too many times
From the dark night that lay behind.
I pulled my wool blanket closer
Remembering I am a warrior
I am made of two hard feet
That carry me on through a winding
Needle covered path
Weaving past lagoons and over boulders
Over roots and upon grass
Sometimes lost and always home
And rusty feathers settled beside me
Wishing me goodnight, so I fell asleep.
Let me go there
Without the torment
Of a rising sun, low
Crowded dusty road
And I’m swimming
Way out past my soul.
One day I’ll be there
A small lineup with a ten
Guardian on the rise
And I’m seeing signs
With footsteps leading in.
You know, it’s ok.
It doesn’t matter that the sky seems to fall when you stretch your eyes wide at the beginning of a new day. It doesn’t matter that the tangle in your heart matches the tangle of your long, curly, brown hair drooping about your itchy nose as you fling from side to side with a worn out cactus shirt reaching down to the same legs you rest your morning coffee on.
I’ve found a reason that doesn’t rely on these silly momentary things. I’ve found the silk road, pock marked by moths with an unsettling history that left a lot of sad pages in the brown covered diary I’ve never re-read. I’ve begun to maneuver this silk pressing just as I would walking through busy streets or desert, dry mouthed and heart fleeting as beats reverberate off of every single thought.
It’s ok.
It’s a revolution that cannot get taken away, it’s the dull side of a newly sharpened axe. How many rows have you planted to become the star lit sky we all look up to; arms are better for hugging then the cold glass walls modern giants embed their soldiers within.
You’re not the only one with down turned memories of what we could never see, never hear, never even share from the distance we watch each other from – but our morning smells seem to remind us of nothing but the closeness we have; but evening silence is a feeling we so easily forgive.
It’s ok, and I’m never really very far.
All the innocence has just left my body
Angels wilting as sunflowers
Along roads striped in yellow
Blue skies dotted with white exclamation points
Into dreams I’m trying to fall back into
On a hazy morning bed
With a slight smell of campfire
Tinglin’ my nostrils
And a ladybug slowly crawling
Six legs at a time
Across the roof to cannonball onto my chest
I’m turning outlaw again,
My stinging words will pierce thy soul
And my fists will bleed my wicked ways,
I’ll drink my beer warmer then
My women have ever been.
I’m turning down the next dusty road
Handing over my soft spoken ways
For rowdy bars and snake tattoos
I’ll start to hiss with the devils drink.
I’m turning outlaw again,
My gang will be 20 strong
On an open road,
Our clubhouse filled with naked women
Who have signed their posters on the walls.
Saw toothed barbed wire
Will be our backup guard dog
And strapped in a leather sheath to my hip
Will be the deadliest blade known to man.
I’ll shoot my shotgun out the back door
At empty beer cans from the night before,
And all my cigarette smoke
Will lead me to toke,
Cause baby, I’m turning outlaw again.
I’ve wasted the jewels of my heart
On my arbutus tree, left
As bark peels my solemn movements
Into a windy road
Lightly misting with a dark mystery
Of dusk setting in
After a long day traveled.
I cannot see for the light,
I cannot hear for the wind,
I cannot feel for my fingers
Have started to scratch too idle
At my knees, left
So bare of a kind woman’s touch
And settled on my mind
With gnarled wisdom in the spine
Of my arbutus tree.
Head pushing backspacer
Forever is a road sign
Empty windows feeding your seed
Fragmented vision – indiscreet
Waxing on the good side
Wondrously bowed a King
Stained white dustbowl
Shady blues bus stop
Cruel is a stop sign
When life’s on the run
Freedom is a hole in
Denim back pockets