I picked her up on the roadside,
thumb out, smile easy.
“Where you headed?”
“To the end of this road,” she breathed.
Hop in.
By the time we’d finished talking,
that road ended at my hotel door.
She slid into the chair,
crossed her legs slow,
stirred my coffee like the spoon was trembling.
“Want some?” I asked.
Her lips tilted: “No, thank you.”
I sprawled on the bed,
TV humming shadows,
watching her instead of the screen.
Then she leaned close,
eyes glinting, voice low:
“So tell me
a **** girl stops you on the road,
follows you up to your room…
what do you think she wants?”
And me, fool that I am,
instead of pulling her in,
I laughed and said,
“Probably just to catch the weather report.”

A hitchhiker
On the interstate of love.
It seems,
I am always hanging my thumb out
Searching for something real.
Anything real.
In what seems to me,
A very sad and ingenuine world.
Just as I thought I'd found meaning.
And for those I have loved,
Those I have left, or have gone from me
Was it your or I?

The want to be free.

My life can be described as a man on the road
Never ending road trips to god knows where
Beaten up truck
Don’t give  f*ck
Wind lacing grease through my hair
As the radio blares

Hitchhikers hopping along for the ride
We get talking til I get them where they want to be
You know, then they’re done with me
Leave me with a bumper slap goodbye  

Least they had a destination
But see nothing can beat the sensation of finding one
Without maps or gas station attendants
I honestly can’t decide which one causes the worst headaches
Advil a poor girl’s novacaine
So I keep moving forward
Better to just be lost than be reminded of it
I’ll avoid me what shows me where I am
What shows me where to go
But I’ll get there
We always do

The man beside me, he spoke in staccato sentences – as if his lips had forgotten the shape of words.

He said he’d been walking a long time, with a hungry thumb stuck out into the road, grasping for the wind beside passing cars. With tired eyes he watched them move on and blur into the faraway horizon.

He’d spent many days out there beneath the meat-eating sun, hoping to find himself in the shade. By night, he slept beneath blankets of stars and dead leaves.

A ghosted-out drifter upon the loneliest roads, appearing only in the transient headlights, and then gone.

I asked him where he was headed; he said it wasn’t what pulled him, but what pushed him instead. There was no beckoning light. He said the shadows, they snapped at his heels, and there was something in the deep lines upon that weather-blown face, like country roads – and I believed him, and kept my foot down upon the pedal.

He said a lot of things, in that strange, broken way. He said a lot of things for the longest time, and then for a longer time still, said nothing at all.

I’m not sure which was worse.

I’m staring at cars going to the horizon.
Thumb out by the road I walk beside them.
Some are too kind and give me a ride.
                                       But I’m a passenger. Their journey’s not mine.
                                       They head to their goal with no hint of doubt.
                                       Soon they will stop and I must get out
They leave me behind, I’ve no car of my own.
I look for headlights to bring me along.
I beg for rides just to get farther.
                                       My journey is long and it just gets harder.
                                       I steal each mile and climb even higher.
                                       Keep moving. I am life’s hitchhiker.

I walk a lonely road this day.
It's all in what I see;

Green trees,
Blue Sky,
Cotton ball clouds.

No one else I see.

A strawberry butterfly sees me.  
Can I have a ride on your shoulder,
Please?

For the longest time, She kept me company.

Without a word she flew away...

Copyright © Ronald J Chapman All Rights Reserved.