La Dispute Scenes From Highways 1981-2009
I let the car drift some
Eye your uncomfortable pose in profile
The postures of long drives
That endless cycling of your numb and near sleeping
parts
And you lean much harder than you need when the road
curves
Swerve through traffic and the cracks in the ground
Every gesture you require of a drive like this night
When you fight now you just head out of town
I let the wheel go over center lines
Inside a place without time, a loop through history
Eye you in periphery now prone in the passenger seat
It’s a mystery the ways you can sleep
I want to leave here for where nobody goes
I want to breathe in the air of all those sprawling
ancient spaces on earth
You said we’re so scared of alone and I knew what you
meant
You want to go where it glows all those places where
your watch doesn’t work
You were riding those nights on the highway always
hiding out inside a songwriter’s dream there
Like a scene from a song, “Born to Run,” or maybe
“Running on Empty”
Ones where they would leave
Certain nights when you’d fight you couldn’t stick
around
So you’d head out of town
Just hit the highway and drive
Certain nights when you’d fight it was fine
But it shook you when the baby would cry
Why did you always turn around in the end?
To hear the shattering of glass on the door again?
So loud the baby couldn’t sleep anymore?
What didn’t you find that you were looking for?
Your mother called a hardware
Set you up an interview
An answer to an ad
The bosses’ daughter still remembers dinner where her
father said
He wouldn’t stick his neck out for trouble again
But they did then
And those days you’d wake up and just decide you
wouldn’t show
He’d show up at your door
Nights you’d skip town
He’d follow you out
Pretty soon you started falling for their daughter
And she fell for you
Drive roll every window down
Let the desert enter heavy and primitive in
Drift till rumble strips sound
Time moves so slow but I know that you meant what you
said
You want to go where it’s frozen
All those places where the highways don’t reach
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere that time is irrelevant
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere the spaces are infinite
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere you don’t feel the hours pass by
You identified the flowers on the road
I rolled the windows down and shut off the radio
Did you ever think you’d end up here
All those late nights you spent driving alone?
You were riding to hide or you were looking for a brand
new life
Did you ever think you’d find one back home?
Did you even think you’d get out alive?
Could you imagine then the love you now know?
I think history’s a system of roads and there’s nowhere
it doesn’t go
I pulled over to the side and felt no time
Off the highway with the landscape aglow
Still not sure what we were trying to find
I only know we went home
