Song in a Drawer
Song in a Drawer
You spend your last dime on a
Two-way pocket recorder because you believe
So fervently through the mild funk of
Your high school fever dream that if you can
Only make the inside out
You will understand
Why your blood surges at your body’s perimeter
Compelled to rip from below the halogen
Tide of your fill-in-the-blank confines, beyond
The Slate Divide that hacks your forward face —
You are chalkdust, and to chalkdust you will return —
Blown in slo-mo
Past the principal’s womb,
The folded rubber runner
Emblazoned with the swollen muscle of your
Lame mascot,
Across the cleat-crushed football yard,
Through the sweat-raked baseball field,
For a moment
You get caught up in the hot dust
Then you break
Free, drifting forward
Forward only
For there’s no such thing as Then
Into the
Out
Where you can see and be seen
Touch and be touched
Directionless
Nowhereless
At night you shake your friend from her own dream
In the passenger’s seat, slouching toward a
Future tense, too late to see the shooting star
The shallowest of nothingness in the rearview
Bleary and oblique, a cul-de-black
Leaving only the yet unlost to the swallowing present
And you’re sorry, but she’ll never believe you
You’ve come this far. You hit record.
Nine years later you wake up too late
You missed it
Or you don’t believe him
You’re driving at night
Pockets empty
Surging
Somehow on
Still toward the same horizon
Against the odds
Light from space rock exploding
(It’s not really rock)
Space dust
Exploding at the perimeter of its metallic body
And somehow
Somehow through reasons obscure
The odds stacked impenetrably against them
Voices surge, crack the divide
Bill slays the lead
Somehow
Kick, tom, and ring
Untaut and fluid
Snaring the sound from behind the wall
To playback
Play back forward
There was no such thing as Then
Until Now
Now there is Then
You’ve been here before
This road
You were driving toward the sun
The only way
Then there was Now
But Now there is Then
There is choice in Forward
You have two arms
Blood in parallax
Anywhere but In
Only where is Out
Out but to Where
Eitherwhere
Anywhere
Allwhere
Stardust burning still
Still Now
Light halves the sky
Moving
Neither toward nor away
Then you know
You’ve reached the horizon
Then
There is Then
Then — There
You are the horizon
You’ve come this far
You hit record