crossroads

I’m driving again

Back to the land of pacified and jilted lovers

Back to the brick and mortar boxes of broken promises

Back to rooftops that swoon and swell with winds

Leaking their poisonous memories

Back to familiar tombstones

And convenience stores

Selling coffees by the hundreds

And handcuffing naïve patrons to trashbins

Back to grade school, high school

Forty year old faces stomped on

By monotony

Back to stories

That claw through my flesh on Turkey day

Back to siblings

Back to the slaughter

Back to original thought being gutted

From my body, medieval style.

Back to looking over my shoulder

For ghosts that want to rape me

Back to my words being trumped

For twenty cents and a pocketful

Of “You should do this”

Back to being an underachiever

Back to Hope’s gold, unfound.

Back to streets lined with Pineys

Beers at the local pigfarms.

Back to the stench of decomposing ambition

And cesspools of dreams $#%^ on by

Good-natured laborers of a free market society

Forward with the struggle.