sunday drive

last night was full moon. it rained after dark, fast, urgent...dark water flowed through the yard as i watched out the window. as quick as it came, it was gone and after the water trailed away the fog came in. i heard the woods dripping and the occasional crash of a broken branch falling, heavy with spanish moss and rain. and the frogs and other nightlife began to sing, so subtle at first you only notice it after they have been at it awhile. ... and the fog rolled in...no ocean nearby, no fog horn to sound...just the woods and the rain and the special magic of full moon on a sunday night.

i usually like to sit in the woods on full moon nights just to see what may go by. but on a night like this i knew lots of night creatures would be moving, i liked the thought of a black car, low and quiet, cutting through the dense clinging fog. i usually drive like i'm related to a race car driver but not tonight. tonight it would be slow and quiet and creeping along to some appropriate music just to see what i may see... in the light of the moon. enhanced of course, doubly by where i would set my destination, because enhanced is the only way to go so low....slow...solo.

everything in place with a little bend to the right, back up, passed through the gates and out..i was free. in the fog. the lights set low....on the back roads i could turn them off. the world was glowing...the fog...the moonlight all full and pregnant, full of scent and wetness. i cut slowly down the road, riffs of gilmore's guitar building easy and gentle. tonight even the music was low and quiet in keeping with the outside, the fog which kept boiling in through the aptly named moonroof. and my heart pounded faster knowing, knowing something would show up just to be found by me...tonight.

i tired of the roughness of the dirt and headed out for the blacktop and smooth speed. i never bothered to stop at the sign. no lights approached, only idiots would be driving in this weather and slowing to a stop would screw up my chirp and roll through the gears fast and hard to a smooth cruise of about 80mph...nah, i am being good and keep it to 60mph...(believe it if you see it), but i wanna go look in places i shouldn't, to see things i shouldn't, because it was a night some who shouldn't be, could be - hidden tonight. quickly i hit the edge of town and i turned towards the bottoms where the ragged people play and things are never the same ...in the light of the moon.

i knew where i was going. i knew what waited for me there and the question to answer to pass through... oh, what would it be tonight? what question, which way, and how but mostly, most always mmm that question is - why? why tonight? what made you come here, ma? tell, please tell, what brought you tonight? and the grin...the bright grin was all i could see sometimes, in places without light. and the laugh to tell me where to go, whom to follow tonight, now, oh please tonight....in the light of the moon.

a lighter flickers, the sound of fried eggs, carbon - i was blind to it...my eyes closed soaking it, feeling it, getting it under my skin. mmm my trips must be fewer but i make them more... more in me. to feel, to smell, to remember keeps me away longer from the bottoms, from the places where ragged people play and a man laughs a bright grin in a dark face... low and slow, in the light of the moon.

when i opened my eyes i saw a glint of steel, heard the sigh of release, the submission to something all consuming, the rush up the spine, the crash into the dark side. i knew my time was coming, i knew it was all i wanted and all i hated and all i could be and could not be while it remained my dark, but not secret, friend. oh, they all knew where i headed...they never ask when they see me dress from head to toe in flowing black, waves of silk above and smooth leather below. they know which dark master needs such things but they don't know the master is in me...inside my twisted pea brain...to go out like this..in the dark...on a mission straight from hell only to seek and once again find my moment in heaven...before the fall, the great tumble, and the crash that always came, so swift, so achingly slow... in the light of the moon.

i thought sometime back that i had learned how to master my master and indeed i think i have...yes think, because still he calls me out, he really is the one to decide but now he does live and die in me. i do have the ultimate purse strings, thick ropes of scars, the tiny soft spots i can wiggle into, to feel it, to smell it, for that brief second, to need it more than my heart but without my heart it would all be for nothing at all...no blood to pump, no spine to tingle, no ropes to pull me back... or might that be down, down to the place where the ragged people go to play, to laugh, and to sigh, thinking of how, how they would get through to find another night, in another town, down the road, into the bottoms, to a bright grin of a dark man... in the light of the moon.

my time was close. no matter how much i thought i mastered the master, always when my time came close, the bile would rise, my throat would close, and again i had to make a decision...should i stay here or should i walk out through the chains, out there past the wire and not come back. it is not a question; more a statement of fact which happens or fact which does not...no question is left. the answers are all laid out as if for a feast and a feast indeed for those who hunger, for those who know their dark master, for those who follow... in the light of the moon.

and my turn came. i tried to move slow; my hands shook. no matter how many times, no matter what nameless town, always the same master... a bright grin in a dark face. i took a deep breath. i no longer needed to look, a blind touch told me where to go... twas indeed something a blind bitch could do after the years of the master hitching a ride on my back, after years of hearing him call and stubbornly staying behind, after years of denying what it is i really really wanted... but now, only certain times, times when the sense flooded me like a putrid scent of a beautiful flower...how could such a flower of white, all pure and unknown, how could such a beautiful thing become so horrid, so cloyingly sweet as to make me swoon or puke or ride through the dark, through the fog to a place, to a pit of servitude, to welcome him in again, if only for the night. as my doors opened, and i saw the flash which always made me smile and grimace, and the taste and the scent and the crashing through my spine to slam into the back of my skull, to sit me back, to take away the way i got there, a laugh, or was it a scream of the butterfly, lapping at the drops which formed and ran, red tears of shame and delight. my eyes closed, the prince of peace walked into the room and laughed, the dark grin in a bright face, a laugh that could turn into a growl just as easy. oh yes, he had me again but then he knew that as well as i, that a night would come, that a question would be asked and never answered, but that always i would come back to him, but i would not take him home. not tonight, not this time, as i mastered what mastered me, i would leave and slice through the night, through the fog, to race to the place i could close gates, close doors, hide from what evil may come and all, all...in the light of the moon.

i knew why this was. it was something very predetermined and then reaffirmed again and again, that the moon would always call me out, always guide me to those places few dare to go, for fear of what they do not know but smart enough to know only ruin laid there unless and if, once given a chance, now siezed and mastered. only the years flew back, only the years kept it down to a thing i could master, or say i did, at least. once a long time ago i read about the moon, the words, the folklore. old legend said if one slept with the light of the moon over one's left shoulder, certainly a lunatic would be soon born. lunatic, well, i am not so sure...sick with something...oh yes...but i dare say i think it has so much, so little but always, always in the dark i could be saved...by the light of the moon.

and there...my sunday drive.