back toward that land of dirt and wind,
the highway blends beneath you
and you feel the heat rising up through the floorboards

tonight you will wear yesterday's clothes
and contemplate the age in your pores,
amplified and sick-looking under the flourescents,
while water swirls and sucks around you
and music pumps through your glands,
too loud to recognize

and you will try to focus through the smoke and movement
and remind youself again that this is not a book
or a movie
and the gravity of reality will settle upon you
as your blood turns sour and
yellow bones grind and dissolve beneath your skin

but now you feel lost and light and small on the road
and the wind whips through the windows like it will carry you away

born on both sides of the tracks

my coal miner, cowboy, sailor
husbands
riding rails, highways
lifting the steel to build towers,
sanding planks, digging trenches

oil filling the lines in their hands,
taut muscles,
green tattoos

find me somewhere in my life of privilege,
of academics and books spiraling me into some world
so foreign to the grit that runs in my blood,
so opposed to the scars and sunburns i see in myself

husbands, saviors,
resotre my identity
make me genuine again

to my dark-veiled friend

no stranger to death
i've walked on your black stoned beaches
heard your voice calling to those who surrounded me
like moths in the night

i've ached for your dark promise
but knew, all the while
it was me you loved best
me who held your eye
as the spirits of the frail-boned
slipped out between your fingers
to some soft light you knew not of

you gave me direction
you drew me to places you were destined for
and you repelled me away when you appeared
and these earthen strangers you so prefer
these fleshy monsters who blind my thoughts
smother me and leave me
indefinitely, eternally

but i follow in your path
and you travel beside me
and i feel you in the shadows
holding me and waiting