Reflections

Friday, November 09, 2012

...

No other outlet looks like this, no place to lay down, no way to make the air less uncomfortable, sand. In the having of no way of seeing, in the dark like kites and kittens and trees, like stray shards of clarity calling bottles and cans clattering, make-shift containers emptying, you are the lost, erect, the bludgeoned and bruised, the talk out loud noise desperate to be heard instead of knowing the truth: there in tall grass shadows in making believing you could have been catching instead of traffic signal heading for red, green, yellow, red gone instead of dead. Wanting more doesn't make you more than anyone else running to catch up to running but, limbs don't work that way, you can't stay, I've been watching you leave since you got here even when I wanted you to stay. More than you is less than ever having had this escape clause space ship audible buzz, the rumble one more time when it was never all that inescapable, cemetery stones aren't for marking they're for saving, names in stone feel like we have a place to go when no one else will show, hallowed uprights spell nighttime culprits, you stole more than I had to offer, deep down, deeper still where these broken limbs make poor shadows pretending to be porch light, one more like last time, the old man's voice coming to chase you away but I can't even do remembering that right. Not any more. Not here without you. When I want to go back there, gone to the really gone, I turn my dreams off, shut down the quiet that seems so silly, smudges in dark carpet of heel to toe might not show it but always seems to say it, tipping past crumpled beer bottles past potato bag chip might, lost when we're caught up in the illumination, same sort of reasoning, making forever last until there ain't no one left, except, nine months line lights up, what's a bastard anyway you ain't been waiting for, no place to lay down, no way to make the air less in my remembering.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I found your blog I told myself there is someone that is going places. That was years ago. Where have you gone and what have you done?

Sgt. John Paul, Marine Corps.

prauphet said...

Thanks for thinking of me John, Paul, John Paul, Mr. Paul, Mr. Marine Corps. I don't know where I've been that would matter to you or where I am going for sure. I can say I keep on keeping on, I try and I look around and marvel at these footprints in sand and earth, the shape of my worn out galoshes in fine white flour after baking, the way gravel always make me think of growing up on a ranch and shoveling out a ditch before we could irrigate the flat ground and prepare for another season of oats, alfalfa and dreams. Where I've been looks a lot like where I'm going, onward.