Asphalt [poem]
It seemed just like a scar
but it was just another
bump in the road.
Asphalt is like that —
(so my road has said
with deadly accuracy)
— inconveniently
melting through the
dissipated heat of
wasted passion into
dangerously delightful
suddenness of flight.
Blindsided by my
worthless dreams
and schemelessness
(despite the wounds)
I’m getting used to
trembledom of night.
After landing in a heap
upon the drunken tar,
blood and pus in equal
measures on my tightly
taped-up handlebars,
(my bike was wrecked
beyond repair but
honestly I really didn’t
care or shed a tear),
I realised I missed the
rocket-ship I scrapped
what seems like many
years before but in
reality was muchly less.
(Nostalgia’s wasteland
drew me, I confess).
As I lay me in that
crumpled heap
(and ankle deep in tar
swathed in a shroud)
a little voice had said
within my bruised and
huge unempty head:
“This is a road for one”
[as if I didn’t know
& laughed out loud!].
A scarful pockmarked
wyndy wis(t)dom
way it was and all.
I didn’t think I’d stay
on it for very long;
but every way I went
I hit a solid wall
and partially died —
much to my beautiful
transformatory but
welcomeful surprise.
In time, I came to see
that bikelessness and
being asphalt-bound
were perfectly adapted
to intensifying all the
multi-coloured petals
scenes & clowns now
growing overflowing
in my stationary brain.
I gave up thoughts of
scaling once again
those indecently tall
& cold impertinent walls
conspiring to pervert
& block my asphalt way.
That voice I’ve mentioned
in this wordy place before
then cried aloud that if
I will remain right where
I wholly nowly am
and seek no more to
sprawl on other shores
those other shores
will tide their way to me
and draw me in to drown.
And then will I be free of
pastel colours in my frown.
© Alan Morrison, 2015
The Naked Troubadour 