There’s keep the cool
There’s take the play
There’s come on in
There’s keep at bay
There’s standing still
Or keep some distance
On the way
words
There’s a law and there’s an order
To each hidden interaction
There’s a habit and a method
To repulsion and attraction
There’s the influence of history
It’s quiet accumulation
Culminating in the rumour
Of a moment that’s been waiting…
Mamma Fay waves off her green gypsy dress,
Pulls the next cigarette to her humming bird lips,
Picks through the cards and the beads in her bag,
Fingertips through her voodoo and prayers…
Mamma Fay walks to the water
Lovers, hold on to your loves
Fathers, hold on to your daughters
Mother’s, keep hold of the ones kept indoors
Typewriters clack with their meat cleaver keys,
Stamping their feet in red letters,
White ribbon scriptures hang cracks to the walls,
And I cant catch a break of a word.
Fragments hang backs to the rafters,
Sheets pass their last owner’s best incantations
Up into my skin with precision.
Not too many families are neat. Webs and ties, some loved, some unloved, splinters and fractures fix and unfix; A thousand reasons appear to unite and divide. From the line down to me I’ve been lucky. In the line from me down, not so or not yet.
Cape Canaveral, Florida to Nashville, Tennessee; 740 odd miles in 90+ degrees F in a car with no AC, no fuel gauge, leaking break fluid and no radio. A cheap Bluetooth speaker spits out spike tin-whispers of anything with treble enough to push through the wind, windows full down, seats wet from heat. Sweat gathers neatly in all troughs of skin and that cheap tin of wasps keeps on humming.
Every daytime we get closer passes fine / It’s in darkness were it tears the tear inside / Each twenty-four hours closer that we get / I sleep less and I re-measure my regrets…
It’s bigger here, faster. SUV bumpers ride up to my hips, steaks come in slabs as bloated as fists and talk runs at rates that I can’t penetrate. Wide open spaces with every bit packed up and built on and everyone got to get first. Southern Rock dominates each bar I find, bloated like those steaks but with half less to chew on.
Exit to Mexico Beach. Highway 98 so long, straight and one-laned a road that it’s easy to drift down its high-pine lined stretch. Got told it’s a shifted down, stripped down beach front, without the rude lights and the half builts and built up. Air smelt a little cleaner there.
From white sand that drops steep into warm green sea water I caught earshot of whoops and applause. I dried off to move to the source.
If a Maybe’s all the will or won’ts
You got
And Sometime’s as good as any
Or it’s not
If Perhaps is all the promise
That you’re after
Maybe Someplace, hurting hurts
But not a lot.
Rats on the Run 