deepundergroundpoetry.com

A Broken Down Battered Backroad Eulogy

I sit here trying to remember the last time
I thought about God
But it seemed like I never thought about God before
And I thought about God
The way some people think of their fathers
I thought about God
And asked God to protect me
But I wasn’t sure why I was asking God for that
I know I thank God everyday
For giving me strength energy speed endurance
The mantra of the last mile the last lap
Towards a directionless home
God--sitting on my dresser
Waiting to be summoned up
When the food’s wrapped up
Dogs fed
And I’m undressed
In front of the mirror
Praying my last mile
To last a few more
But when your heart slows down
And you got no one left to kid
The hurt comes clean
And the glamour’s stripped away
All going down the drain
The mascara the rouge the lip paint
All masks that want a last mile
And naked before an image
That stares back
Is not a body
But God saying sleep now
You can push your mile tomorrow

I used to think in terms of jazz
Things like
Fightin jazz
Exiled jazz
Enraged jazz
Striking jazz
Jobless jazz
Now its become something much worse
Hungry jazz
That’s where the voice lives
And you don’t know it
Until you’re in a trance
And you pound your fist into your guts
As if you’re done
You had it
You’re gone
Make it stop make it stop

That was the jazz I searched for
And then I got it
And now I regret it

But Christ, you’re here--
I remember when we rode through these states
Breathless on winded border towns corrupted by their aged inhabitants
Getting double crossed
And hot for a one night stand
And I’m talking to you
And you’re talking to me
So we sit there shocked
Holed up in some joint in the middle of nowhere
Trying to get out of the rain
And what you got to offer is
A temper three shots of whiskey and a book of old mythologies
And I got the cross of my blood
Around my neck
Hanging there like a noose
Readied to be tied up strung up hung up with the last checkout keys
And you talk of the last time you were young
Before the rain came down
How you’d take a ride down the streets
In mid-America deadpanning
Your story in a jacked-up engine
Straight into Tiresias
That was your dream you say
Finding what was gonna happen
And not avoidin it
Just crashin in it

So here we are in this vision
And I’ve got no money
I’m broke
And I’m stranded at a crossroads with you
And you’re penniless
You’re in my dream
And I’m waiting for you to wake me up
I cant see the edge of the country
But you’re walking there in this inferno world no matter what
And I’ll go with you if no one else does
Because you’ve gave me what I want
The shock of it all

I’ve seen your past hung up on the wall
When Duluth wasn’t enough
When the California coast nearly strangled your voice
When New York wasn’t gonna save you again
When you’re down
When you’re up
When you’re singing
And when your not
You’re there in the mind
Calling the shots
Taking the hits with the angels

And this grief
Drops the mind
With your fallen angel
Like the lost cinder of your youth
Whose ember burns the fire out of your sorrows
extincting itself into the muddled gray
Of the Crow River

The songs you play
“Woke up this morning feeling blue/ seen a good-looking gal can I make love with you/singing hey hey baby I got blood in my eyes for you”
Are not in the streets that you walked
When hell stretched your hands
But in the edged rain of your father’s country
The cold north that breathes the ancient
Wetness of a flooded mythology
Thinking good people, good people,
Don’t do this
“Hey hey baby I got blood in my eyes for you/ don’t care what in the world you do”
What you’re getting at is not what I want to see
And I’m hurt
But you say nothing beats down on the road
So you’re packing up
Leaving town
And I’m stuck here
You want me to make up my mind
It’s either here or there
“Hey hey baby I got blood in my eyes for you/ don’t care what in the world you do”

All this shit
About making the right choices is done for
It wasn’t about two sides
But what was right for the situation
It wasn’t about back talk
But about the sickness you say
That droughts out the spirit

But these memories are full of smog
Shrouded in the dew of your exiled north
That dampens your call
With the grit of a howled Ezekiel

And behind your face
Through the rain
The face that I thought was the rain
The face staring back at me in the same way
Thinking about the same thing
About the same song
The same long road
The same skin on skin
And that’s what it is skin is skin
And that’s maybe what I fear
Seeing the history of my skin
In all its pain and grief
Touchin me
So many times I couldn’t even count it if I could
But the history of your skin
Got trapped in God’s tears
Falling down on your land
Flooding the gateway
To your final resting place
Where you blow in a wind that burns as it blows
And bastard you for thunderstorms and neon signs
For angels that you thought were fallen
And for philosophies that you thought were fucked from day one
Bastard you who thought you could outlive them all
For painting the shit out of your dreams
Strumming the guitar
And for thinking that you’re God
Bastard you who nearly killed yourself over men
Who knocked out your teeth
And for women who screwed you over
And for getting caught in your mind
When you crashed in ‘89
With a mangled hand drunk hand sick hand tortured hand fucked hand
And powered now by your lost voice of electricity
And grittin your teeth
With the outlaw battered feet of Odysseus
You come home
And love this body
A broken vessel
Of a sacred tomb
Shattered
By whiskey sonnets

I remember there were two days
When I starved myself
To know what it was like
To be a child of these woods
Broken child
Starving
Hungry in the rain
And dusted by two days
Of grief that shouldered
Your tears from creatured wounds
Crawlin over my heartbeat
Becoming slower and slower and slower
I remember the belief that I could conquer starvation
So I got up and ran as far and as fast as I could
Because I thought I could run away from it
But it found me
And you found me
You saw my eyes loose focus
And you rescued me from that rain

Then you chained me down to your canvas
Telling me that there is no such thing as exile in the north country
And that people don’t want you to be free
That you’re free to invent your life
You chained me down to that canvas
And said
Remember that
Written by whispellc20 (THE LEGEND)
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