Away from Dresden

2007.

Away from Dresden

Echolalia
of curse on curse,
seething my breath
back into the wind

clench and grind
the uneasy gnawing
of the chain at the gears-
the bike’s corroded as my conscience
but both have carried me this far from hearing you-
though your voice booms and recedes
from memory
often as the car roaring towards me,
whisper of apology
rushing in its wake.

The day’s drawn with the harsh simplicity
of a child’s crayons
every house and hillock
raised and definite
as an old man’s opinion;
somehow I slip aside it,
alien as abstraction.

I’ve tried to find myself
in this slow dispansion of the miles,
to let your words spin under my wheels, and
run backwards with the road.
I’ve only found the whir and whine
of the wind in my ears,
the thrum and purr of the bike lock
rubbing over the back tire,
and a high and heady hunger
since I ran out at breakfast
and won’t be back to you for lunch.

Found myself dissolute
as the air shrieking through my spokes,
found this boundless distension
between nowhere and nothing
is a street too long to travel.
Can’t remember how I came here,
but I can’t go home,
and there’s no one waiting up for me,
in the next city over.

Found the hammer of my heartbeat
nails me back upon
this blue-gold backing of the real,
I’ve only reasoned a direction out
from your house,
by feeling through this my father’s world