Bent and Beat

memphis came back around when i least expected her
a voice from the past, a temporal echo
a thing imbued over time with a significance it always held
but i never truly understood
when we were younger, when we didn't know any better
we used to ride around together, the two of us in that red chevy
singing with a lack of abandon that only the young can muster
like glad and sorry, there is little space between then and now
only these few truths, certain relative levels of truth
outweighing the absolute in the drunken dawn
leading us back slowly by fractal resonations to particular places
much like the arms of memphis
in a different city with eyes lined deeply and scored by weariness and time
but her voice is the same it was before, in the backseat of that 77
and the words are more surgical than ever
we all get what we need in time
or at least what we deserve
and some of us get just what we wish for
to be as jaded and star crossed as our little shakespearean daydream headplays had wanted us to be
she reminds me
on the telephone unanswered, on the radio nearly forgotten, and hidden among the pirated digital copies of youth's out of print yesterdays