Love Amidst The Ruined

You might come here this Monday on an impulse.
Telling me your life has broken down.
That the last good kiss you had was years ago.
Saying you walk streets laid out in a maze.
Past hotels that didn't last,but bars that did.
Fueled by tortured youth trying to accelerate their lives.

You see churches not kept up.
A jail that turned 100 this year.
The prisoner is always in,
Swearing she knows not what she's done.
You say this economy supports a rage.
A hatred of the varied grays life sends.
How one good restaurant can't wipe out the boredom.

All memory resolves itself in gaze to your past.
In whose panoramic green where you knew,
The trees that rustled high above the town.
Is memory now your life? An ancient kiss in a sold home,
Still burning out your eyes? Church street bells seem
To announce, "We ring, but no one comes."

Do houses you abandoned
Leave vibrating passion that has passed?
When you towered over girls,
Borrowing your Dad's station wagon.
Hot summer fumblings in dark lanes.
Clean linen and crisp piqué.
Your world will never let you run from that town.

Must you kill that boy,
Laughing though your smile collapses?
"Someday soon," you say, I'll go to sleep and I won't wake up."
She tells you ,"No! The car that brought you here still runs.
It knows the way.
The woman who loves you has her hair swept aside;
Her exposed neck curved to your lips;
To your biting claim.
Casted shadows shift in dim light
As you press her into the wall."

You are here because it's somewhere.
You are lost in the known.
Barkless dogs lay panting in the summer streets.
The beer won't stay cold.
The last new song you liked
Came out a long time ago,
And the radio never plays it anymore.
You are searching into your past.
Homes less remembered than desired.
A chance, however fleeting;
Wanting to resurrect what little good remains within.

I write an elegy to the broken. To the never weres.
I write for those who got lost, wishing someone--anyone--
Would come looking down this sandy road.