Search This Blog

5.11.09

'On the Road' Part Two by Lou Mansfield

…the whole truth, apple and peach, is rarely placed into your hand and is never, most days, nights.. . within reach. fate ties a blindfold, delicate, close, with it's cold and distant fingertips, for a summer, a winter, tight.. . every now and again you catch a falling thought from somebody you wish had driven past and tossed that apple, core, out of the window before you.. . Catch your breath because life knocks it out of your lungs so much, for so long, you never know, all that you feel, do.. . is, gone. replaced by a different kind of peach. below the fireplace something different kindles and you lose your eyes in the shape of the flames that unfurl and fold and billow, smoke and sail out of sight, out of being, out of reach.. . some days you're the fast moving car, windows rolled down, arms over the edge, lining the road with gems, rose petals and sparks of apples, cores.. . Other days you're the suitcase on the edge of the bed, waiting to be taken, left behind, or undone.. . the whole truth, apple, peach or pear rarely lands on your pillowcase, like some kind of fallen angel out a sky that knows, holds on, keeps it all out of reach.. . out of the blue, sky, for you to know, before the day is over. before the day is absent, before the day is gone.. .


when you spend all of your time outside of being, away from every carousel, car. you lie across the white line in the middle of the road. the line that separates, that spark.. . about direction, about motion, about travel, about the world.. . you lie across the fragments, across the fall.. and you're staring out to sea, up at the sky line, the fiery heavens above you, the shore.. . all blood-red crimson sometimes, sometimes summer's tears fall.. . And you stay there, waiting, eyes closed heart undone. You taste the shadows of the clouds as they pass by, as they swell, they fall. You make sense out of every comet trail that scores, the sky, your eyelids, your thoughts. All of your dreams are pieces of the picture, the whole, the new.. everything you dream about and remember and write about, down, comes true..

you'll never know how much you were meant to be, you'll never know how much of you to be, that you are, is true.. For you keep your skies beneath pillowcases, you keep every break in the clouds above you, in your home back pockets.. you keep every dream that you're written down secret.. you never know how much you've missed, because

you'll never know the whole, the truth. of it all. ..

Your life is a fable, in the fireplace, of fate. a myth.

do you stand on tip toes?

or do you.. . tap the tension of adventure, desire every unknown, lust for not knowing ever. or taste

having every exit

mapped..

but the steely horizon betrays the blue with the silhouette of something strange, something dark. Something that binds and ties your heart into deep, lead, heavy knots. by knot. amnesia creeps into your lungs and you can't remember how to breathe, you lose all sense of time. a knife cuts deep beneath your collarbones, cheeks, it could be kitchen, bread or slaughter. and air like ice pierces you back into the room, like Elvis. dead.

All that you can remember about the first foot you set upon the road, is that your only desire in life. the only thing that you can ever think about, cold, hot. shallow, deep or adrift along a road of bones to nowhere.. . is that heavy, lead feeling of fear and dread. that knocks your heart out cold, sometimes. and leaves you feeling like Priscilla, in the wake, in the aftermath, all around the eyes. .

All that you've ever wanted is Elvis. And all that lies, at the end of the road, like a fallen down crucifix, arms open. eyes like parcels waiting to be untied, undone, open.. . There is no place in the world, this one or the next, like home. And all that you have left to live for, whereabouts unknown.. . is desk.

2 comments: