Faces In The Grapevines

I like to drive sometimes just when the sun is settin just when the sun is dying out. The sun screams to the Blues but they just set there watchin as they like it dark. Mountains don’t need much all told. The Blues are enough for itself unlike the sun who’s always needin somethin to grow for or pushin people past their limit still beatin down even when there ain’t no more sweat in the body. Down Depping off Russell Creek I like to drive through them hills with their middles blown out makin way for the road. It’s a sight to see the sides of the hills still standin lookin like shoulders over the pavement and you just drive straight through em. I come out here when I feel alone like when I can’t stop wonderin why I ain’t found no one yet and maybe it’s my own err in the matter as perhaps I have and lost em all the same. It’s a trudge through them hills alone and like I says before the mountains like it dark. I’m young yet but I ponder with hat in hand feelin like I ain’t got much left. Everyday feels similar like wearin the same outfit but complemented with a different hat or handkerchief as the days vary only slightly and only to a certain degree. Everyday bein the same I wonder when things might change and maybe that’s up to me to change em but when I try somethin screws up along the way and becomes a case for stories much sadder. I wonder if maybe I’ve used all my chips up and by chips I mean chances maybe all them hearts I break are like the hills blown out for me just to drive on through and maybe I don’t deserve another chance relegated to a life I don’t want but a life I asked for.

Drivin backroads lookin for faces in the grapevines considerin which road to take. I could follow one and see where it is I end up but somethin about me knows I’ll just end up back here where I started, the Valley, the Valley of slow motion in regular time where the sky and hills go mostly unnoticed as most people here have someone. The sun settin is different alone than it is with someone else. Sometimes I see a real nice one with purples and light orange almost yellow and reds like none I seen before and I look for someone to show but there ain’t no one there and while it don’t make the sunset any less beautiful with someone else you know it’s real and not make believe like in Hollywood or stories told by liars. Nope when you lay two sets of eyes toward the west they see the same sun and that’s almost too much for eyes built like ours and I guess what I’m workin at here is sometimes the sunset is overwhelmin and it’s hard to contain it all inside without it comin out in other ways whether it be drinkin or druggin or whatever else vice a man may succumb too. Yup man needs woman as the sunset eventually bleeds the lonely man dry as it’s all contained within him with no outlet and the older he gets the more alone he gets and the more sunsets he sees with eyes so full I’m not sure he even sees em anymore or if it’s just somethin he does like how a dog pisses on a fence post or a man drinkin coffee in the mornin. Without a woman to remind him a man forgets why he does most things and eventually he arrives at a point where to change would be to up end everything he ever knowed. So instead he sits out and watches another sunset and another day building towards somethin but he don’t know what for.

Cover Art: Almost Summer-Walla Walla by Lee Evan Belifiglio