Below the Fold

Getting Lost

We all kidded each other. So many times. Gathered around a burning campfire with our plans for the future. Casting crackling silhouettes against tethered shelters. Gazing up at the eternal sky and making our simple observations. Connecting the dots and making some sense of our lives. What did we know?...back then. Of what it means to come face to face with the brutal limits of our human condition.

Walking the straights and the narrows. Running to the whatever landmark we decided was safe -- at the slightest sign of danger. Stepping out onto basement landings to get a breath of air during those days of laying low. Years are there for a reason and they have a way of piling up when they're feeling neglected. And you can see them from desert motels and from early morning kitchen windows. Finding yourself seated at a cheap table with a cup of coffee and a plate full of stupid mistakes. Burying your head in hands and sifting through a random collection of what-if realizations. Fighting the morning sun -- with its unkind ruminations...how many times has it risen looking the same and how can you ever measure the ways you have changed?

Out the side screen door to do another day. What else are you going to do? Really...

Was there a day? A moment? An hour? Long ago. Did a flash visit you on a random corner some mile down the road? Telling you that you were free to move right along on your beaten path but you do have a choice. Maybe you should have just pulled over to take a look at the map and get a couple hours of rest. Sometimes the road needs fresh light to be seen clearly. There's only so far you can go when you stay safely between the lines. No directions were ever paved. No destination was ever marked. You've gotta be skeptical when they try to fold away the world into pocket-sized convenience. You'll never get there from here. Not now. And if you could go back and locate your violent skid marks you'd just find a brand new set of matching lanes, looking so proud and full of themselves...so sure of their destiny.

Bags were packed and so much was left behind. Seasons change... turning evening into muddy water and synthesizing sand into pale gathered misty thunder. Gazed-upon horizons glowing with the promise of surrender and sweet escape. Playing hide and seek with frozen images...cracked and broken and settling on boarded up resting places -- shelved by tired arms...tattooed with old stories. Save your memories for someone who cares. Closing time is close at hand and you're not the only one who has business here.

Dead-man's curve is always there...lying in wait to claim another set of sad eyes. With trunks filled to the brim, buckling on impact, leaving a smuggler's ransom out in the open...a miserable treasure chest of symbolic manifestations. Making their way to a salvage yard existing in the exiled spaces of our tossed off interim reservations. Waiting in shame to be sifted through by shadowy refugees. Washed up on a foreign shore. Searching for some idea of a better world. Ideals ground down to dusty recriminations. Willing to settle for whatever image of freedom they're able to get their hands on... some trinket to soothe the fenced-off wounds...something to hold on to as the sun sinks into the west. Tighter and tighter.

A payphone receiver is dangling in the breeze. The diner sign is burned out. And you're standing on two legs in the middle of the road. Deciphering the tilted sign at the edge of this tombstone existence. A simple word that carried a once-upon meaning you can't quite translate. Welcome.

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