Journey west

Today I leave for the western coast
Mouthing a final goodbye
To cobbles and to terraces
That once served as my muses
But now seem so desperately empty
Almost as if they become darker inside
The further away I go
Until in one peripheral blink
They become so empty, so hollow
That the winds themselves change direction
Suddenly trapped
A chain-gang held together by gravity,
The bricks and crumbling mortar
Are gradually dislodged
Whipped quickly away by newborn force
And crumpled against the mass they once constituted,
Little fragments of houses
Which contain only fragments of memories
That themselves existed only in the transient minds
Of visitors such as myself

And what of my great loves
Or at least what’s left of them
Who have taken root within the breeze-blocks and wartime cement
Are they too consigned to sacrifice
To be dragged beyond event horizons as I drive away?
I wish I knew
But ignorance may be for the best
Save that I might finally escape the achromatic navel of these structures, now unfit to house a soul,
Perhaps they are the sacrifice for which I am allowed to leave
And it is my sacrifice that I must always want for their safety
Even as I see them crushed beneath their weight
Might I one day be crushed the same?

A curious fear begins to brew
As the massives fade and shrink
Into the black blur of the distance,
What if I am to atrophie as they did
For the dire sin of abandonment
Which in leaving I commit,
How, for the rest of my days
Will I be able to square this utmost terror
That I may one day be deserted the same
Just to permit one more man to escape
For one more overcast day?
Alas, this idea so terribly frightful
Of old houses without windows or heat
Where I might draw my final breath
With but a single second’s notice
Is not what accelerates the dusk in my wake

Something feels even wronger still
The terraces, consumed now by a barrier
Through which light cannot advance
And has since outgrown the horizon,
Appear not to be contained in their streets,
Of what is afoot I can’t explain
Only that
As I climb the hills to find the exit road
I realise I am not journeying alone
I am stalked by loose car parts
There are keys and papers and stones
Detached from their usual place in the world
Hurtling full-speed toward me
To the generator whirring in my chest
Which, as I look down
Is exposed to the naked air
And has lost its usual shade of red,
In its place, a nightfall of sorts
Much like the one pursuing me outside,
And so, with this troubling change
I face a bleak conclusion
That perhaps I have not escaped at all

For if I have escaped this void
Which has consumed all of the places I once knew
And the insides of homes in which I was once happy
There exists a forgotten segment of my heart
Which is to remain here along this sandstone fault
Amongst dark valleys and railway lines
Between parked cars and ruptured tarmac
Atop splintered carpets and warped linoleum
Where shattered pieces of self will petrify,
Such is the consequence of the destruction
Which I have brought unto myself

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