A poem for myself and the world

despite all the places you have escaped,

you will never leave the invisible confines of your hometown

the thick, unbreakable white walls of the high school

where boys are caught in the gray bathrooms under fluorescent lights and girls 

are choked and drained in cars parked on the cracked black concrete

sending up heat waves

the roads where cars drive holding infinite worlds of thought and perception,

unbreakable and unwilling to take an audience

your backyard behind your father's workshop

between piles of gray metal and rotting wood, the poisonous smell of gasoline and oil 

and the green mass of woods and rambling bushes of honeysuckle, the smell

fresh and syrupy 

and sick with guilt and secret machinery of the teenage soul

jump over the carpet of remaining fall leaves where snakes and spiders and dead rotting melancholy and the shed husk of last year's heart live

you take what you can and pretend you weren't there

jump off the trailer and run between those old trees that used to be joined at the bottom, split to let you through

past the old black chevy truck with the wheels mossed over, not driven in years, becoming part of the ground

you meet love in a quiet bedroom and she flashes the no vacancy sign on her chest like a police badge

you meet death for coffee and he says he isnt hungry

you lock sadness in your trunk and she thrashes and wails and seeps into your engine and hot wires your car and drives you 95 miles per hour to nowhere

you meet the devil and he's everywhere he can reach

you meet God and he's everywhere the devil can't reach, the bottom of the ocean, the heart of the woods, the bathroom door that looms over you as you sit on the cold tile, ripping your heart out of your chest

he's nowhere you thought he would be when you were 11, and everywhere you need him

you meet the world and shes you. you meet the world and she's your hometown. you meet the world and she's fields and hills and sleeping cows. you meet the world and shes a bullet train driver in tokyo, a bodega owner in new york, a teacher in south africa. the world is mostly made of love. the world is you.