surviving the moment

it's like restaging a play, equal parts
rudnick and euripides, the protagonist
     somewhere children grow up to be normal
returns to his childhood home, all wood paneling
and farm implements, and is confronted, literally, figuratively
     somewhere people pay bills and don't lose sleep over paying for
     school pictures, 3 dollar lunches, antibiotics
by the reality of his childhood, embodied by figurines
and old trees, nothing less surreal than a movie set, a backdrop
somewhere a city pulses like an artery, full of heat
some created thing. he steals a cigarette
from his mother's purse, retreating to the back porch
     somewhere a boy dreams of kissing the football star, square on the
     mouth
with only a tin pan of cat food and an eternity
of dumb, unmovably stars to stare at.

inside, the siblings sleep in their rooms, dreaming
of new cars and top 40 radio, the mother warms
     somewhere kids are fucking on country roads, listening to heavy
     metal, hiding beer in their glove boxes
the kitchen, turns on the oven, busy in the act
of making something out of nothing. he smokes
     somewhere old classmates are making their parents happy,
     enjoying a life full of sport utility vehicles and endless, beautiful
     babies
on the porch, the house behind him a thing
perpetually burning, and suddenly he is 14, sneaking out
     somewhere people are doing what they really want
with no place to go, imagining a thing bigger
than this dirt and one tree--a world that moves
     somewhere there is something more faithful than television
and is knowable, a place not teetering
on the edge of collapse.

so, he comes back to this spot, pulled
by an innate need to fix things
     somewhere people don't secretly fantasize about death
that stay broken, to be the good son,
the good brother, the good person, again
     somewhere religion isn't a substitute for thinking
again and again, confident
in the knowledge that he cannot save them
     somewhere people are being forgiven
from burning houses, tornadoes, divorces, propane bills
or the ceaselessness of struggle, the blow, the head-on
collision that has become their collective lives.

so, they wave from the house, the props are all left in place
as he drives down brown gravel to the spot
     somewhere people leave and don't look back
where dirt gives way to asphalt, highway
interstate--something far away from canyons of
     somewhere someone isn't compelled to make sense of it in a poem
red dirt and the violence of lifelong despair,
a place where he forgets about solution and resolution, his mind always
preoccupied by the unlimited possibilities of failure.
     somewhere the world is not like this


-t. cole rachel