Wandered Way

Back down the back road    
of the mind,    
I try to rise, rouse from sleep    
the porch-floor degenerate, hazy    
hangover of crack and cyclobenzaprine.    
There is, I fear, no clear trail back    
just paths from the down-slope    
back up or back down to dead ends.    
Wood sweats. Dust sweats.    
Metal burns to touch    
where for days even the dust    
still tastes like crack.    
I am the problem out here    
with nothing better    
to do with time    
than seek remedies.    
   
The process begins    
working backward    
to locate, to extinguish    
to escape the fires of spurned hope.    
I swallow and wait    
for the true nirvana of sacred diazepam    
to snuff this flame    
to return me to that dream    
where stalk and leaf regress and fatten    
backwards down the fractal branch    
retracting each specific
irreversible and finite road I've blackened,      
back toward the root,   
paths backtracked    
to some imagined point    
   
where I can be remedied    
can then move back forward,    
can live some wandered way we found    
to the ideal    
to happiness.