where you want to be

i recall when i was a freshman in high school an overly zealous english teacher forcing me to sit at a desk and write what i felt. what was composed inside that mass of twisted metal and fiberboard was a poem entitled "a tree stands alone." it spoke of a withering tree on a desolate plain that was a marker of a once more prosperous time, and i had been referring to only some higher power knows. however, now as i sit isolated on another sunday afternoon in this vacant outpost of modern culture, trying to carve out what i am going through, i reflect back upon that mirror of my current life that i managed to compose several years ago. how had i seen, from a classroom filled with portraits of western movie stars and inspirational sayings, my life on fastforward, to where i would stand the withering and half living tower of a once shimmering time. for me high school was never a place of acceptance, it was a place of fuck yous and have a nice days. the immortal summer that has been forever bookmarked in the history held by my mind involves a close group of unlikely friends, an old decaying pick up truck, voyages through early saturday morning garage sales, all paired with the current releases of what are still some of the artists closest to my heart, or at least where it was before i handed it out for little more than bus fare. since those days faded into autumn and my sophmore year of high school, i have been left voyaging to find what has left in those deep, well worn seats inside that pickup. as we grew the bonds faded and frayed, and we have chosen so many things over one another at least at one time or another, always returning on chance to those evenings where we can haphazardly throw in taking back sunday's where you want to be, and somehow be mystically transported back to the time where we did want to be. as of late wanting to be has been a problem. i want to be nothing, i want to write, i want to think, i want to express, and i want to forget. but, like locked in the verses in that fateful album, i remember more than i would like to forget. i recall the smallest details from what she wore on her sixteenth birthday, to what her favorite animal was the day we voyaged to the zoo. i forced away those who had shown me the deepest confines of brotherhood and compassion for a chance at her heart, however marred and untimely that shot may have been. so now i stand here, a tree withering on a desolate plain, somewhere near a northern outpost. i am still the same panic stricken runaway who fled that place. i am still running, now, someone needs to catch me. someone needs to catch me before it's too late. i am meeting the four winds, and dismembering to accomodate them. hurry, the panic is fading into darkness. say yes, say yes, say yes......