Sunday, March 30, 2008

you can never go home again


And all that razzmatazz. Thanks for reading. Here's the final poem in my memory-tastic series of Charleston Times.


Charleston Times 10


music on the pavement and all I ever

had in Charleston was

the ability to hate it.

was it palm trees or beaches?


the College of Charleston, the girls in their

makeup running down

the lane,

the revamp of King Street dying

away from

such humble dirty

tricks and dangers.


I had a crummy apartment with

a good girl in

the heart of a ghetto puking its guts out.


and the city was mud, it was cobblestone,

it was the horses marching around

for tourists and their

wedded happy cousins.


I had nothing, Charleston, and everyone

knew, and I was going to die there,

and school was a fluke,

and I was just a kid, and the street

was brazen, and the only friends I ever

made sat there on the beach lighting

fireworks, and yes

of course I fell in love there


all the time

.


so I left. so I left

and it told me to leave

and it said no southern son and it waved palm fronds

and I left in a beat up truck just in time

before all heaven set with the sun

on the last

day

.

3 comments:

kat said...

wow. this is the best one yet.

i like the palm fronds waving.

PS I was talking with a friend from Charleston last night who lives here in NoVa, and another of her friends who lived there also, and we all decided that you can't go back to Charleston. There is nothing left for anyone there. I think we took all that it had to give us.

kat said...

Is this Nick or Ryan?

Chris S said...

That's the one and only Nick East.