I was brushing my teeth with a cigarette butt in the shitter of some dive, testing whether or not the shadow in the mirror was halfway still alive. The bare bulb’s flicker beneath a Kilroy scrawl would be the sayer of sooth and proof I didn’t need a crystal ball. Sure enough, with a gag and a shiver, my state became clear and I didn’t much like what I saw. I had to turn it all around right then and there, even if I’d gone a few exits too far. On the way out, this too is sadly true, I passed three lot lizards slinking around between seedy little deeds in rattling rigs. You know… that last resort for making do. They’d hit rock bottom and I was circling the drain. It was about 4 a.m. near the Tennessee line, behind a truck stop in the rain. Sometimes we all need reminders of just how bad it can get. I say put the darkness behind you, but not so far you’ll forget; unless you don’t mind falling in the same hole twice or you’re immune to regret. Me, I’ve been shifting gears north of forty years, making midcourse corrections in all directions, never getting very far in any which way. I can barely manage to be late on time and can’t find the means to make my reasons rhyme. By now, you’d think I’d have a little bit of something to say. But here I am out on the road, still hurtin’ for my Comstock Lode and paydirt is forever a mirage that fades away. I’m always left with a load of sailboat fuel, dragging into dawn like a tired mule, wishing for a patch of tar where I can rest my treads.
Hey, maybe if we all stand still, whatever ain’t supposed to happen never will.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have the luxury of that choice?
Look, there’s no shame in confusing movement with freedom, but the two are not the same. Not all prisons are bolted to the ground. Some may have wheels and a commanding view, only to serve as confinement by another name.
Once again, I'm bobbing and weaving with six hundred miles to roll, all alone with an endless stretch of crush-and-run, brimstone billboards, spooky shacks and hazy sun. Time and again, sunrise magnifies the nightly toll. I'm batting my eyes like Betty Boop on Molly, stumbling drunk through a minefield, ignorant of my self-propelled folly. In these lingering winks come the split-second dreams, like skull-shaped blips on a radar screen, while the rhythm of happenstance sparkles and hisses, weaving in and out of my best intentions and near misses. Lost in the flickering shadows of loblolly pines, before and after are forgotten and there’s nothing good between the lines.
Drifting, I watch the story unfold, I’m no part of it now.
The gavel bangs and all is sold.
In capitulation to compulsory slumber, I finally bow.
A couple of seconds of disregard bridge the glide from smooth to rough. More often than not, rumble strips just aren’t enough. The singing shoulder hums that lullaby dirge and the guardrail gives on an overcorrected merge.
Tipping.
Tumbling.
Crumbling.
Ripping.
Awakened by the end.
Shit, you think the road is a bitch? Wait until you’re upside down and backwards, jackknifed in a ditch, then it’s everything you could possibly want. Watching all those dumb sons of bitches going nowhere fast is the ultimate affront. Now, my key got bent and I stripped all the screws. Anyway, I wasn’t going home ‘til I had big news. I'm a stick in the mud and I'm trapped in the sap, bogging down instead of taking a lap. Give it time and they’re sure to find my imprint in the crimson prism of this dead Southern clay, and as archaeologists analyze my signs of struggle, one of them will probably say,
“The poor bastard tried like hell, but he just couldn’t get away!”
If the specimen’s lament was at long last decoded, this is how it mighta went:
“Like a squirrel with its acorns, I’ve scatter-hoarded my dreams
Catalogued in reams, in many a voluminous crypt
Forever dripping with the nectar that I coulda sipped
Had I only grabbed the you-know-what by the horns”
Damn! Maybe I had something to say after all.
(artwork by Ryan C. Eubank)
Comments