#ThrowBackThursday: The Drive Home

I wrote this poem on my way home from Perdido Key one morning in March of 2008. I had spent the night out there visiting an old friend. This part of my life was strange and complicated but Perdido was gorgeous. It's still one of the prettiest places I've ever been.

The Drive Home

It’s 6 am
She’s driving back
To where she’s going
From where she’s been
Along Blue Angel ParkwayShe’d never been to Perdido
But where she’d been last night
She’d been one hundred times before

She drives
And watches the sun rise
The first fuchsia rays lighting the sky before her.
She’d had 2 red bulls
Sugar free to watch her figure
Not that it mattered
She was the type of woman
Charles Bukowski would have raped.

And it's a wonder no one had -
All the arms she’d been in
The lips she’d tortured
All the looks over glasses of Drambuie
Not because she liked it
But because it was exotic, dark,
It was something different
Like her.

"You're different," they all say
Always the same breathy lines
“I feel comfortable around you” and
“I’ve never told this to anyone” and
“You and I were made for each other”
They swoon. They whisper
“I’ve never met anyone
Quite like you before”

-          You’re smart
-          You’re pretty
-          You’re interesting
-          You’re pretty
And I only want to be with you.
Their proclamations tend always
To raise her eyebrows in disbelief
I only want to be with you . . .

She's not buying it anymore
She drives with heavy eyes
It’s all so tiresome
Men she kissed years ago
When she was still a little girl
Have clung to the memory
Of her lips & eyes & thighs - All lies
“I love you,” they say. “I always have.”

She weaves the car in and out of turns
Watching the sun rise
Wondering about all the lies
Flowing forth from behind
Such sincere eyes – his and hers
Between her lily fingers burns
A clove cigarette, smoldering
Like the desire she left in the boy

On the beach - a fire that won't
Be quenched by the morning tide
She takes a drag – the cherry burns bright
Like his hope and desire – denied
She recalled her words
“What do you want – to love me?”
His reply
“Yes – I always have.”

She sighs and rolls down the window
The sky was light – the sun up
It had all been so stimulating at least
Watching him burn in the water
Like an effigy on the beach
Drowning in her fire
He was papier-mâché melting
Going up in flames.

She drives on - passing housing developments
Wishing for normalcy -A thing
Like those white washed facades
Labyrinth streets and lamps
Now shutting off in the morning light
That was nothing more than
A notion fabricated in the cold war
The Naval Air Station was to her right.

Morning
Normalcy
Heavy eyes
Normalcy
Cold War
She looks at the houses – rows and rows
Did they hide horror shows of normalcy?
Madness inside

Cold Wars
Love triangles
Rapes
Silence
Children crying in corners
Women with white washed facades
A fabricated notion
Normalcy

Black Eyes
Given by guys
Not men
Guys
Wife beater stained by beer and fear
Sad faces peering out kitchen windows
A coffee pot clicks on
2 cups on a table

"I'm sorry baby,"
Whispered over steaming mugs
Of decimated dreams
No response
Silence
“That’s right bitch”
Silently fills the air
Louder than the jet engines overhead.

She drives, arrives
The sun rises
Her eyes heavy
Her mind races
A hundred different places
Faces, conversations
They’re all the same
Mundane – yet glamorous.

She has them on strings
Her eyes pull this way and that
They dance like marionettes.
She is Svengali,
Pulling words from their lips
Glamorous “I love you.”
She closes her eyes
She’s was only talking to herself.



I typed this up the morning I wrote it after not sleeping back in 2008, so I think there's something wrong with it. I'll give it another look and maybe you'll find a revision on here in the future. I really like where I was going with this poem. In the meantime, here's a picture of me and my friend Stephanie from around the same time.

Honors Formal 2008