Dust bowl Jerusalem

March 3, 2009

And now it’s March – the last of winter hanging from the mouths of the highway tunnels like hellish white fangs as I roll through PA Ohio bound. I leave all that tarnished metal and crumble-cracked brick, exit out into the empty tar while the promise of love and tender dances sleeps in the passenger seat. I take us out that lone road every man finds and seemingly remembers in fix of déjà vu – the power-line crucifixes all leaning as though the weight of Christ just sunk on each over the dead land. And I roll away the stone and enter this dark cave of stop signs and farm houses so forgotten like a dust bowl Jerusalem, the dry soil puffs off the dying croppers heart too – his pulse fading as fast as his purpose as we plug in and turn off our labors and resign to life lead by wires.

I throttle through this black hole with all its cats walking backwards and clock hands falling off trying to remember my birth and wondering when my heart will flutter its last before it all seizes and ceases – seeing all the deaths behind and ahead and will the road look the same when I leave this brief trip behind. Will my father’s rough hands still guide my own after we missed the last sawdust afternoon of beer and chopping wood?

But it’s time to move – time for one last kiss to the lips of the road. Somewhere men and boys are on similar rendezvous, stopping off to drink from bitter mugs seemingly filled with melted serpentine belts and lusting over the technicolor menu photos promising vibrant perfections in taste to keep their night alive on what may be their last flat roll under the stars till the good graces on the horizon lift a spotlight to this stage and send its moon-burnt children to the grave again.

Just up ahead, the grey dawn pours the bone-grey milk into the saucer, cats arch their backs in a waking stretch, the steam rises off the fields and that clammy and vague tomorrow is born again and I wale once more – I am here again, until.