Never Take Us Home

Never Take Us Home
© Surazeus
2025 03 15

Though I could try to believe anything 
I prefer to measure reality 
with objective words I steal from the moon 
by speaking thoughts the trees breathe out as air 
which translates firmament of crystal eyes 
to furrowed fields where wheat sprouts from our skin. 

Strange stories we bake in memory bread 
contain sufficient formulas to cheat 
how fast we drive on lonely country roads 
that never take us home to that weird place 
where we fool ourselves we may still belong 
till radios scream conspiracy theories. 

Regret for how my arrows pierce my back 
blinds me to snide disdain of river stones 
who declare with loud laughter of dark waves 
that the world will end in both fire and ice 
though we tell the old television set 
why we want to drive to the waterfall. 

Shocked in candle-lit room of oblivion, 
I pretend I have never been awake 
enough to taste the phosphorescent bulb 
that floats above my castle built of sand 
despite waves of distraction that confuse 
people who think their dreams never come true. 

Yet I will climb the ladder to the sky 
so I can find palace of crystal eyes 
where God sits on fake throne of dragon skulls 
watching me bumble along my life path 
with no direction home beyond the bus 
till I fall asleep under apple boughs. 

I refuse to rub strangeness from my sight 
since I break the fragile plate of smeared ice 
by talking to the bashful river naiad 
whose star eyes magnify my mushroom mind 
with vital flecks of hungry apple seeds 
while I trace shadows of falling asleep. 

This land of river vales was never mine 
but I have always belonged to the land 
wherever I have walked ten thousand years 
so I possess the lonely apple tree 
to earn salvation of the baptized clown 
because I think I am the star-blind seer. 

I find no salvation of holy truth 
while walking signless road across the land 
to build the shining city on the hill 
that must be Camelot of glamored myths 
where my ancestors danced each summer eve 
to bind their bodies with red thread of fate.