Prodigal

I haven’t written a poem in four months. I haven’t written a song in four years. This is probably a bit rough, considering how long it’s been, but the lyrics came to me while listening to Shovels and Rope walking back from class. Enjoy, and feel free to critique, post thoughts, or praise. I like praise; administer it liberally.

I’m on a long walk home I don’t want to make,
the heat of the day makin’ my bones quake.
I’m shootin’ looks into every gap and alley
seeing men countin’ days, and every mark and tally
sayin’ I’ve got more steps ahead than I can take.
 
I can’t smell the roses above the compost,
I can’t hear music the way it’s composed.
The sun’s under cover for fear I’ll discover
she’s naked with the moon under silk covers,
hidin’ shame for what she is when she leaves her post.
 
But if for one brief moment I could see the sun
just long enough to let me find someone
who’ll let me know
I’m not alone,
well, maybe it’ll be alright.
 
I’m chasin’ demons off a mountain I never knew was mine;
achin’ for a fence so I can work to pass the time
and secure a destiny that’s been set down from the start.
Damn! This life of ours could be a work of art
once we bathe in the Jordan at Zion’s borderline.
 
Don’t say I didn’t warn you: external peace, internal war.
What you hear in my chest belies the footfalls on the floor:
the steps I take into the door of my childhood home.
It’s the opposite of hell but heaven’s let me roam
until I, the prodigal, returned to knock and enter the door.
 
And if for one brief moment I look the other way,
I’d see a long path and hear somebody say,
“I’ll let you know
you’re not alone.”
Well, baby, it’ll be alright.

I Versus Terminal

I dated a girl once that told me I reminded her of Matt Damon. I don’t know if she meant in looks or actions. She’s married to an athlete in Arizona now.

I shift uncomfortably in the seat. The man next to me turns on the overhead light.

In middle school, my best friend and I got in a fight over a comic book he’d lent me. I hadn’t finished it. It’d been three weeks. He said I was a bad friend. A good friend would have given it back as soon as he’d asked for it. I still have the scar on my right knee from when he pushed me. I gave him a black eye. He’s studying business at Texas, now.

I have to turn my music up higher than I’d like; the engines are so loud. The air tastes stale – processed.

When I was a kid, my brother told me I should be an architect. I was always building things back then. Pictures of the Lego cities I’d made are still on Dad’s fridge. I think the fort I built in the woods at Mom’s house is still there. It was made of a fallen Leland cypress and plywood I’d taken from abandoned construction sites. My brother’s seeing a therapist about anger management now.

I slide by the man next to me back into my window seat; I’ve just used the lavatory. Outside all I see are the clouds and wing below. I can’t see the ground.

My first boss told me that I reminded him of himself at my age. I never liked him. He never realized that. He said that I had the same motivation, determination and personal integrity that got him to vice president. My dad had gotten me the internship with him. He reminded me of my dad in most ways. The door to his office was left open one day. I caught him with the girl intern. He had threatened to fire her. He and Dad couldn’t keep their hands off of women. I reported him; he didn’t know it was me. Several other women testified against him. He lives in a mansion by himself on the coast of California now.

There’s a crick in my neck. Airplane seats are a chiropractor’s worst nightmare, I think. A baby starts crying in the row behind me. Ocean’s 12 is playing on the TV sets. I watch, but don’t listen.

I fell in love with a girl on September 11, 2001, minutes after planes flew into the trade center. I was a freshman in college. Her name was Camille. I felt the moment I fell for her – when her head fell onto my shoulder. We’d just seen the news. Her grandmother had died of a stroke the week before. We had the fact of our parents’ divorces in common. She had green eyes. I’ll always remember her smile; the sun-seed between my ribs. She started falling apart after that day. She needed me. She needed more than me. She needed a rock; I was gravel. I could only handle so many tears. She needed a shoulder to cry on; my shoulder was eroding. She began seeing a therapist that December. She stopped seeing him in January, right after we broke up. They began dating in April.  I fell out of love with her on May 4, 2005. That was two months ago; on the day I bought this ticket. She has one child and is in the process of a divorce now.

I’ve been trying to read a book; I put it away. My hand finds the acceptance letter in my backpack and I pull it out. The baby behind me is sleeping now. The yeasty, microwaved smell of airplane food pushes forward from the aft.

My parents paid for my college education. I was pre-law. If I hadn’t been, my parents wouldn’t have paid. My mom never finished her law degree; she felt I could make up for her failure. Dad thought English was a dead end. So, for once, the two of them agreed: I was to be a lawyer. I was eight when Dad left. Since then, I’ve been set on disagreeing with him. But free education at the Ivy League was worth more than vengeance. I graduated with a 3.8 GPA. They began talking about the bar exam – separately, of course. I began disagreeing. Then they locked their respective doors until I changed my mind. I spent the next year – this past year – in Hawaii. I lived with a friend. He got me a job at a hotel restaurant, tending the bar. I wrote in my spare time. Two months ago I met Jesus and a girl in that bar, within five minutes of each other. Both told me to honor my parents. I made a few calls to the two halves of my home. I apologized. They accepted silently, gratified. They offered to pay for law school. I tried praying for the first time. An English program at Oxford caught my attention. I daydreamed. Dad got me into Northwestern University Law School with his connections. Mom bought me a plane ticket. The two of them are waiting for me to call when I land now.

A nearby woman yelps. The cabin jolts as we land. Rain streaks the window. The flight attendant chirps into the intercom with a Welsh lilt, “Welcome to Heathrow International Airport! Local time is eleven twenty-four, AM.” The girl I met in the bar winks at me from the other side of the plane. The man beside me flips through a magazine and I see a picture of Matt Damon. I smile, thinking:

I’m nothing like him.