Expanding Upon Mark Twains a Bad Ass

I read that very intelligent blog about humans and pain. I think this is very relative.


It All Comes Together Outside a Restroom in Hogansville
By James Seay


It was the hole for looking in
only I looked out
into daylight that broadened
as I brought my eye closer.
First there was a '55 Chevy
shaved and decked like old times
but waiting on high-jacker shocks.
Then a sign that said J.D. Hine's Garage.
In JD's door was an empty Plymouth
with the windows down and the radio on.
A black woman was singing in Detroit
in a voice that brushed against the face
like a scarf
turning up in the wrong suitcase
after everything came to grief.
What was inside we can only imagine:
men, I guess, trying to figure
what would make it work again. Beyond them,
pistons, beyond the oil on the ground,
beyond the mobile homes all over
Hogansville, beyond the failed,
restrooms etched with our acids,
beyond our longing,
all Georgia was green. I'd had two for the road,
a cheap enough thrill,
and I wanted to think I could take
anything that aroused me.
The interstate to Atlanta was wide open.
I wanted a different life.
So did J.D. Hines.
So did the voice on the radio.
The way it works is this:
we devote ourselves to an image of a life
we cannot live with
and try to kill anything
that suggests it could be otherwise.