road trip

we never had any promises that came true...but it meant a lot that you promised...meant the world at that moment and then when i was gone...when you were a story in walks with sid and mark and ali and mina and...

promises lead the way to jobs, to hoping, to i got this and then, and then it doesn't happen and then what...the liquor store is right there, the corner store open at 2 am and pm for a dutch, a corona, beef jerky's, porn, kit kats and a thousand vices.

walk in with beaver, as he gets a loosey and a bag of salt and  vinegar bbq doritos. he offers me a stogie as he flames his lighter, barely missing his long nose, close to guantanamo, long enough to be in a line up at the airport.

you sure you don't want a drag?

i'm good, i say. i'm real good. although my heart hollows, sinks from rejection, beats like an upside down pail hit with the broken broom stick by the boy at the lexington ave train station.

sniff the air. inhale like the menthol-laden air was coke, like i was looking for bass to play in my head.

we leapt into the car, flew through trump country, where town-folk were beaten under ptsd's from becoming heroes awarded with permanent trauma and soundbytes of support from politicians for being brave, for upholding freedoms...freedom to rape, pillage, destroy, murder, homicide, torture, piss on, shit on, deface, spread cancer, small pox...

we stood in the parking lot of mickey d's. without a tomorrow, without sense of yesterday, i crumbled. had some hash browns. watched beaver chow down the 2 big macs and bacon egg and cheese he got.

nyc was an hour away and waited for us like a warden, like a cell door closing that we needed to run into before solitary confinement, before supermax and strap down, before a torn anus.

we flew in the night...a sense of empty purpose to return, hugging the ledge of the mountain highway, on two wheels, hoping for float, hoping for something to give...

then yoga, in the rain, by the hudson, by the cry of wolves and the circle of hawks. then Surrender. beaver stood back, his face close to the water, rain streaming harder from his eyes than the black clouds...

then yuj, then clarity, in breath, in You, in releasing from the grips of this body, of the false sense of sense,  driven by expectation, by conditioning, by revised cosmologies that deify capital, status, material...

then You...then it was clear, cause You were before me, everywhere, close to the river, in the river, in trump country in the voice of rejection, in the voice of the rejector...if only You Listen...