Circe

Circe

I. Cyclops

In a strange city I fled after I flicked the lighter that burnt the beard of the boy from 
Charleston who just wanted to be friends.

I walked into a municipal park and sat on the rubber cheap gravel pit swing set facing 
deep out into the black-tarred intersection in Five Points to stare at the rows of 
houses and cry.

My black-sheened plastic cellphone that sat beside me on the fourth rung from top of the 
metal slide’s ladder began to hum, its red-eyed LED gaze blinking in rhythmical 
precision, offering itself to me with tin-throated synthetic dumb buzz.

The purple-grey midnight sky sank down into oily-slick glitter rock pavement, all dim 
dark from lack of headlights burning, nearly pitch black save one lone halo 
streetlight silently humming above a busted trash bin. There was no raccoon in
 that can, no angels ready to descend from the heavens with a guiding word, just 
me misty-eyed and whiskey sick like a runaway kid with nowhere to go, tired and 
jumpy.

Sick-stomached, I crept up hills of neat rowed manicured lawns to retrace my steps past 
brick and clapboard forests back to a house that didn’t know me and people who 
didn’t need me, in my head enduring all things venomous.

Back inside I searched from back to front of the house for friendly

            faces, finding evidence of a hasty exit, nothing left but cigarette butts and implied
 malice.

II. Nausicaa

Surrounded by a mass of dwindling swirling shifting bodies I fought off

            sleep with more malt and endured three hours worth of acoustic covers of Beatles,
 Beck, and Dylan with rheumy eyes and series of cued smiles—

A corolla of bleary swatches smudged and bled through into one another appeared and 
offered up in a soft womanly voice a couch and a blanket to sleep with if I went
 home with her. I accepted with mumbled gratitude and walked lead-footed and 
unsure to a waiting Lincoln that gasped and coughed through four AM downtown
 quiet.

“Look,” she said after parking on a street in front of sardine-tin tight rows of 
condominiums, “just because you think you’re some big rockstar guitar player 
doesn’t mean you can f**k me, so don’t get any ideas.”

I fell asleep in a room made of stained-glass and woke up to a packed living room of
 gritted teeth and nicotine cough, went outside and shared one cigarette and
 monosyllabic jabs in hushed morning dew quiet under harsh sun, and waited for
 news that I'd be dropped off at my car after lunch.

In a plastic-stucco corporate Tex-Mex s**t shack I sucked down free water and ate
 complimentary cardboard tortilla chips and salsa, asked the boy across from me
 with tight black pants and Palestinian keffiyah what he meant by the statement "us 
hipsters," wasn't answered back and didn't even care, just wanted to go
 somewhere where people didn't try so damn hard.

Driven back to my car, opening her car door I put my bare feet on hot black asphalt, 
turned around and said "Good luck with life," gave her my number when asked,
 then walked off, opened my car door and sat down to the sound of tires screeching.

Turning the keys to the car, I traveled through congested University lanes, head buzzing 
and muscles sore and aching, hesitant to pull onto the Interstate back towards
 Charleston.

III. Ithaca

I would rather go mad, drifting through countless states and borders towards Mexico, 
unwashed and caked with dried semen and sweat,

Dropping acid in abandoned Chicago slaughterhouses for nightmare trips with crusties,

Smoking rocks on beds of ash in crushed up Coke cans in Tulsa,

Mind constantly numb from cheap alcohol,

Dick and body sore from some lonely man or woman.

Rather eat peyote with old leather-skinned hippies in Death Valley or 

Run through small town city streets stark naked and covered in garbage, screaming at
 passing traffic to f**k off and leave me alone forever,

Lock myself in some motel six off the highway and never come out,

Then to ever go back to University tested drudgery, drowned in papers and amphetamines, 
walking to class on the same path every day, passing the same people, giving the 
same nods until either choosing a different path or breaking to talk uninterestedly
 about our individually similar burdens, making fake plans for the future, seeing 
my future self in rushed meetings with sad professors mind-strangled with useless
 knowledge,

Avoiding ex-girlfriends at parties and enduring dead-bored minds fumble through 
conversations, 

Screaming wildly during brief bits of static-free clarity before going home to hours spent
mostly staring at TV screens or notebooks, never having enough money or time or 
kicks of any sort.

I would gladly leave, and probably will at least once, but deep down I'd know I'd miss the
 home cooked dinners at mom and dad's, the various overblown definitive 
statements thrown my way, the humid sea salt air, winding cobblestoned streets, 
the sunny afternoons smoking bowls and sleeping in 'til two, or the time spent 
hiding out with friends in our ghetto clubhouses, even if sometimes I just feel like 
some frozen still life filling up wall space,

Which is why I'm on this highway driving back home right now.