Take Me Home

I've seen parts of West Virginia that John Denver never dreamed of

At hours when it's better not to be awake

I've tried to wish a thousand sunsets into living up to

Watercolor paintings perfect amateurs could make

The local paper's a collection of obituaries, comics,

Syndicated horoscopes, and football scores

Weather, wildlife, and time somehow combined to snap a spring

Or leave a perfect hole in every home's screen door

Take me home

Every morning sky's the milky blue that threatens snow

Even at times of year when snow is out of season

Not a cloud in sight to speak of; if they did, they'd say

It's somewhere in the distance trying to keep Kentucky decent

I have struggled up the switchbacks and imagined just over the edge

An underbrush of unrecovered cars

If you make it to the other side, what's left in place of paradise

Are empty malls and cinderblock-wall bars

Where the strings of lights that line the room pose no threat to the shadows

Or the John Does wishing to remain unseen

Patrons counted on the pattern until, one-by-one, they blacked out

Pink and yellow, red and orange, blue and green

Where outsiders order something just to keep from saying nothing

But saying nothing is the best way to blend in

Where the sons of one-night stands meet daughters of bad decisions

On the dance floor to trade strangers' medicines

Take me home

To the end of the road

When nothing else matters

Then anything goes

It's the end of the road

Where the smokers sneak like schoolkids through the disarmed fire exit

To an alley that they call 'the patio'

And when one-by-one they skip their bills, the unsurprised bartender mutters,

"If they had to go, they had to go"

Up among the spirits, from the top shelf stares

A velvet Roosevelt now all but welded to the wall

While down among the denizens, a friend's whoever says

There's only bad deals if there's any deals at all

Like the widow Mrs. Whitney whose first name remains a mystery

Although she welcomed me with open arms

On which in fading script above her wrists read, "Carpe noctem"

Which, unprompted, she explained means, "Do no harm"

She described the artist as a man in motorcycle leathers

Whose needle barely pierced the air between them

Then she looked away and back again and let her left hand fidget with

The frayed threads of her strapless dress's green hem

Take me home

To the end of the road

When nothing else matters

Then anything goes

It's the end of the road

Minutes' meanings aren't diminished when a nighttime speaks in stutters

So I watched the winding road's curves turning straight

And construction cranes above my head looked more like origami

Than the birds that they were meant to imitate

I turned corner after corner past a vacant vaudeville theatre

With its wordless marquee wilting toward the curb

And the town's only hotel, which would need more than hanging plastic doorknob tags

To let me leave it undisturbed

So I hit the empty road while there was still some fog to follow

And a clear line between exit and escape

Past half-finished developments like Pheasant Ridge and Oakwood Manor

That adopt the names of what they have replaced

I've seen parts of West Virginia that I'd never want to leave

Even if I could find a better place to hide

Words may fail me to describe it, but they say it's almost Heaven

If you make it to the other side

Take me home

To the end of the road

When nothing else matters

Then anything goes

It's the end of the road