The subway track over head stretches out and I can see it in different colors, made of clay and different canvas textures against a backdrop of a variety of greys and browns. Its crawly legs move like mechanical bugs as the road narrows in. Neon signs, buzzing and hideously florescent, are advertising discounted furniture placed on top on two by fours, nailed into mustard yellow walls that have been bleached copper by the sun–which was setting at just the right time over the traffic lights and in them I can see trout fishers and the creeks in every Pennsylvania backyard.I pray to the Southern Preacher, to his gospel organs while the car window rolls up over my head. I ask him to shake my head in madness, to speak in tongues so I can look at myself in the eyes of madness, so I can see what I look like underneath the arched wood of a chapel and whether or not it would ever change me. But he always changes, he gets soft and weathered. He becomes the woods and I see him baptizing in the boulder fields and in the reservoirs. I see his education, his college beard.
They dip their toes into the mud, cover their fingers with moss and let their collars fall flat and uneven. They drink wine out of coffee mugs and leave traces of it on my lips. They kiss me in the water and they pour wine on my cheeks. But I send messages out into the traffic lights, looking over my first glimpse of the Appalachian trail and the first glimpse of your teenage years. I kicked an empty beer can over the side of the rocks and it fell into the Delaware.
I looked over the bridge to see Jersey with drunk eyes and it burned me so I shake my cup full of dirty nickels. I’ll never say anything ever happened and I’ll never say I’ll ever understand it.
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Posted on October 26, 2011
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