It was just after one a.m.
when I finally
got the hell out of that house.

I tried to tell them that it was just a question
of mistaken identity.
I cited several films and books as examples.
All the while swearing up and down
that I had borrowed the clothes on my back
from a charming basket case in St. Louis.

The two of them had to be brother and sister.
That’s just
my casual theory
on the matter.

I was trying to get back to San Francisco
but wound up getting lost in a part of Mexico
that exists between Cedar City and Colorado Springs.

Directions would have been nice.
I seem to remember that being what I was after
to begin with.

After the guy jabbed a fork in my hand,
his sister showed me a stack of letters
I had never written and forced me into a chair
that faced the backyard from the kitchen.

Small fires and statues made out of cardboard
boxes covered the area,
and I’d have to guess their fence to be about
three or four hundred feet tall.

Barbwire and lost trick-or-treaters
as far as the eye is willing to compromise.

Half of the time
that guy and his sister just argued with each other.

She tied me down with newspapers
created by reformed hacks who finally learned
how to die for their convictions.

He went on about the mother we never shared,
and the Valentine’s Day where everyone
got a chance to say something they didn’t mean.

In the living room
I quickly lost count of how many pictures I saw of that girl
looking slim and frightened in a modest prom dress.

Her acne was tragic even back then.
It was a different guy in every picture.
It was a different reaction to a spiritual funeral.

It was pretty much the same song you hear
from a radio hidden in the walls of an abandoned landmark.

Eventually their argument got so bad
that she broke a plate over his head
and dragged him down to the basement.

I was sure they hadn’t slept all year,
so it made sense to black out while I could
and wake up in my own bed as it rested
on the back of a truck flying through the Montana dark.

Have you ever been on one of those roads at night?

It’s almost like the nothing in front of you
has found a way to devour the world under your feet
and everything else you take for granted.

04/27/2010

Posted on 04/27/2010
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