“and i've heard all those stories
about the black cabs and the way they drive
that if you take a ride with them
you may not come back alive
they might be psycho killers
but tonight i really don't care
so i say turn up the music
take me home or take me anywhere…”

-- jens lekman, “black cab”

i’m more of a country boy than anything else didn’t expect or need this oh no where are we? reading the odyssey these days and had a bit of one myself— we’re all making fun of homer for his repetition, “hey, so, is calypso lustrous, or what? i forget,” but would have given almost anything for that kind of textual predictability in the veering courses our own lives just took. not lost but a bit helpless and a bit out of place, night but not late-night (late-night which the diners call nite): boston public transit mishaps. saying you’ll meet people in one place but they don’t have cell phones and there’s no service anyway but they don’t know the lines and oh no what next it wasn’t supposed to be this way. where, when,: inconsequential—the feeling: universal. oh no. looking around thinking it’s really the mercy of the system now and home seems so far away.

damn you little artist inside that says write right now when i’d rather just sleep.

so a station was closed and a shuttle was close right when we needed it but not so close and next thing there’s we running for it like a movie, like we’re center stage and running hard is me and it’s like there’s theme music. you can hear it. later scouring the station get some type of cop on the job, on the horn with a description very helpful where are they? they shouldn’t be wandering around alone out there. and for a second we feel important but we’re hungry and we’re tired and, actually, well, there’s your poor, underground right here, and it’s not us. we have problems but not the worst problems and we’ll inflate it and seem cinematic because it’s never real tragedy up on the screen. later driving back safely say a litany of the almosts and maybes and could have beens and line up causes and jinxes and blames and ifonlyitoldyousoes.

later still keep driving through night look back and say it was like five hours only and jesus it seemed like a life and by this time tomorrow what would fade and what would memory change details and inventions adddropsubstitute when next we tell the story. and hey, reunion day years later it’s like we’re already there talking about it now remember that night when. remember how surreal and how we were talking about “the twilight zone” until just a moment before it got all surreal and claire had a four-leaf clover and we’re actually lucky, they could have stolen the car. cars.

and we’ll forget some later and some will come back and then there’s what remains,

what remains: some city dirt washed clean off in a late shower and some errant words scrawled sleepily against waiting page like stories we’ll tell later.

stories we’ll tell.