An Abrupt Spin on this Car Ride
My life as a highway. I�ve tried to live an uncomplicated life, I think, but there are never straight paths, only crooked ones. Driving my proverbial car down the road of life, I meet the opposition: for I have passerby to avoid, oncoming traffic to watch (as they straggle home to safety and the known) and everybody else, who seem to want me to move forward, ever forward, faster and faster, until the day that I am soaring, free, on my own, a life without fetters. And yet, the assumption exists that there will always be a reckoning, a forcible policing. A moment of moral rectitude and reclamation of responsibility, spurred on by friends, parents, the boss, and most probably, one�s own guilty conscience. No crime is small enough to keep off the moral compass, and the guilty man suffers no loss but freedom � relegated once more, as it has for centuries, to the lengthening list of once-haves and want-nots. On top, there is only loneliness, mile after mile, down desolate roads and treacherous alleys. Motivated, perhaps, by blind faith; but when faith fades, the secret songs subside and momentum slows to a stop, and painfully, agonizingly, the soul revolves around one question: where am I going?
I see the here and now right outside my window, rushing by in a great moving diorama: Akron into Chicago, then back through Cleveland, on to the Pike into Pittsburgh, turnaround in Philadelphia up to New York, and just like a song I heard somewhere, I took that old train down on to Poughkeepsie, where time stood still. Where I met destitution and heartbreak, and ultimately � but there is no ultimately in this story. Redemption, maybe, but I�m no saint. I stay blackened, by fear, by worry, by regret.
I left the scene of the crime back outside Milwaukee. I figured nobody need know what I did right then and there, because being poor and broke ain�t no cause to be traipsing around like I could pay the fine and such. All these laws and facing up to society and all that � it�s all good when you got the money to pay for it all, but everything�s too good for me these days. Even a bucket of wings and some homebrew cost more than I got in my wallet. One day, I�m going to look for some change to pay for my last cup of coffee at another dying diner, and find I only have enough for a dime tip.