Lost Highway

 

Today I returned from my parents’ house on a train that left at dawn

Arriving there I knew who I was

but in my old house I uncovered the burden of a heritage

Once - only last year - I was someone else

and by leaving I froze that person forever:

my old room full of his stuff

people’s heads full of fading memories of him

They talk to me as if he were alive

living inside me

and I scream at them of a year, a cityscape, a book that changed me

a person I met who told me Marx was a saint and Calvin a criminal

 

It makes no difference;

each time I return I must watch this frozen boy live on in their memories

slowly dying as they forget

I must watch them play out his few short years of life

like Holden caught between Catcher’s covers

and I must mourn and mourn and mourn

 

‘Why are you weeping?’ Hazael asks

 

Why?

Why?

Why?

 

Because who we are is not who we were

and seasons change and I change

a second closer to dying already

 

and on that train through the tired

I sat next to a capitalist who spoke of Mercedes Benz, much money, a big house

plus church on Sunday to thank God for all He had done

 

I smiled, telling him

starving people, death as if they were jokes;

I realised sadly that I had nothing:

I was insincere, a mere chameleon, a gusher

 

my face began to melt

I tensed

people stood and pointed -

for a moment, as if to purge me of a dream,

I was Percy Bysshe

 a lantern shining in the tempestuous day

 

the fleeting face fell away

and underneath I was Woody Allen

not transcendent but witty

with a mind of lust and neurosis

 

I could not keep even this;

it was another mask and when it cracked I was revealed

as the boy I found with embarrassed eyes and fish lips

 

beneath those masks that pale face

more ordinary than ordinary

 

the people murmured

turning away in boredom

the capitalist slept

the train slowed then stopped

spitting me out into the bleak city

 

- Nathan Hobby 2/12/1999