The Man Who Chased the Sun

Here's why I get nervous at sunsets

When the sun crouches on the ground at the earth's edge and looks you, eye level in the part of yourself that still Imagines what heaven looks like and says
One of these days, boy
One of these days when the soil opens its throat and swallows me whole
I am gonna take you with me
Then plops into the ground like a nickel in a Zoltar machine

Y'all
Dusk is my mother
Between a night sky so huge we measure it in increments of dying stars
And a ground that resists every footstep like clockwork
She warmly says

That although the light has gone
It has not gone out
That there is still a direction to chart and if you're looking that way, it's forward
That You better follow your heart but don't trust a word it says
That she quietly hopes
I will not go

I used to sleep curled inside of her
Palms like a promise
Now all she can do is rest them on my shoulders
Before I throw myself at the dark

I swear
Midnight is my brother
When the world is upside down and I find myself dangling from the asphalt like an insect in an evicted spider web
He has shown me
That everything is prettier under the moon
So still that
Bare skin is a pedestal for the loneliness
Of its light
That it is not look and don't touch
That when it bleeds they can pour it into a bottle and call it wine
Y'all, I have had my
Fill of moon
In fact, that light is 50% alcohol by volume
And 100 proof that you're alive
By its bootlegged shine
All men Cast shadows
Some shadows Cast men
Drunk on their own intentions
Heads twisting counterclockwise
Trying to turn back the time to a time when they were young and didn't need moonlight to feel that way
But only managing to blur it further forward
Let me tell ya
The sky is not a sobering thing to look at

Now Dawn is my father
When the Sun stands like a grinning lion in the east and licks its chops
Father dawn will say
Get on out, boy
You got an ocean of blood and wind to move in that thimble of a chest of yours
And hurricanes aren't born sitting down
Better hoof it Before ya drown
In your own miracle or
Before you doubt that you can

But I rarely talk to my father anymore
Most days after I crash into the backs of my eyelids I don't lift them from me until high noon at least

I'm surprised by the pouncing lion overhead and how the day has ripped by
How it has taken me and changed it
How I have tried
To take it back

How afternoon is a really adorable puppy that's just a little too excited to see you and that metaphor is the only Thing that keeps me going most afternoons

How lost beneath the ultraviolet gaze I have been and still am
And still am

But I Have learned that
All roads lead to the horizon and somewhere out there one of em is torn wide open by a lion with a come catch me Grin on its face
And hurricanes don't form sitting down
And legs are the closest things to wings you'll ever have
So you better learn to fly or to fall or to drown
And
When I see that setting sun now
I think
One of these days, boy
Some part of me that knows what heaven looks like is gonna leap into the sky like Jordan, palm that son of a bitch With one outstretched arm, and slam dunk it into the horizon so hard it'll shatter into the stars

Someone, please
Graffiti my tombstone and rob my grave
If you find anything but the truth there
Sell it all