I AM CRAWLING TOWARDS SOMETHING

There are roads back behind the cities. There are paths that lead invariably to a ditch or a creek. I have sat as still as stagnant water bright with flies. I, @ moments, have become the tiny pond immune to movement or release. Merely a resting place for more & more decay. It is not the beginning, there before the paved roads...it is only the first memory of a story. It is what I remember best. But it goes back further still. To a slum in Jersey City with ducks in the tub. All the way to the coast of Spain. & when I think of these things it is merely imagination now. I can only pretend to draw a knife across the duck's throat & drain the blood into a pot for soup. I can only imagine throwing some drunken quack down the fire escape when he declares my daughter won't live to see the summer. &, how is it I know, how I always know, right where the bottle is hidden when my father offers me a nickel to find it for him? & the fields? What do I know of the failure of the fields? What do I know of work? I have always been the willful vine. Enemy of the stake & twine. I couldn't see the beauty of  the rows or the poetry of the fields. I felt only oppression.  & so, without further investigation, or without looking back I left. What happens next I have become an expert in. I can tell you everything & that is exactly what I plan to do. I am going to tell you everything. I am going to tell you about the movement of the stars & the path of the road out from the ditch to the avenue & the freeway. But, there is a hitch. As much as I would love to move forward & finish this story & move on to the rivers & the endless sea. It seems that somewhere, someone was right. "All love stories are ghost stories" yeah, I think he was right. So before I leave this place entirely. Before I pack up all the remaining things, the books & cords & glass & shit left behind, I have to go even further back. I have to examine that duck's throat. I should rethink the plight of the physician. I have to board the steamer & watch the pattern of the waves beneath the moon as I make my way, back back back to the Ghost of Spain.