This Road

I've traveled this road
from where the hills
talked of torture
and the misbehavior
of rivers. The rise
of sound in an underground.
A voice in an undeterminable
tongue, like all thoughts
worth conceiving whisper
of rooms behind Mexican doors:
dreams.

It's been lit with candles
floating in milagro tears
and saxophone shine.
Its walls contain all
the memories of music
interrupted. Their color is not
of smoke. It is of vowels
voiced as song,
stretched until visible
on the expansive walkways
of the inner ear.

How else to explain
my dizziness?

I speak and watch the road
flash red. I dig the ground
with my teeth
and leave it as a map back
scratched in sand.



by jerry gordon