LONG ROAD TO OBLIVION…….

There is a stretch of road from Austin to Las Cruces thirteen hours long,
Barren beauty echoing dreams of time far gone where you can lose your
Soul as you hurtle along its expanse searching for the place where it ends,
Driven in one bone jarring push as the heat fries your eyes, sand coats
Your mouth as the radio screams music from some station south of the border to keep you awake and your focus on the vacant horizon unfolding;

Rinsing my mouth with warm tequila fighting back the inertia of exhaustion,
Time moves in the cadence of tires hissing on hot concrete, engine rocking
Like an out of tune rock band in a cheap worn roadhouse in a distant night,
And I made this haul roundtrip every weekend for an entire summer,
Until the rhythms of this enraptured odyssey became imprinted in my brain
Like a film loop from some new wave film without beginning or an end;

The why was simple enough, a mix of love, passion, in a desperate breath,
The way one only gets when you’re young enough to not care about reason,
Only the feelings of the spirit when you think you’ve found that one,
Thinking about his smile, his eyes, his lips, the short time so precious in
Its’ yearning, burning need that the bone jarring voyage is worth even a
Single searing kiss, one night of furious explosive lust to hold on to;

And the road uncurls smoking hot like a ribbon of brimstone ablaze in the
Passage of my steel ship cruising the void in search of that special love…..