That
woman found Jesus,
trading
in nights on the town
for
mornings at the altar,
draping
herself in scripture
instead
of the barely-there dresses
she
loved to wear under the
dim
lights of the club scene.
You
can still talk to her
but
be careful for you may
have
to eat some of your words
normally
used for no-holds-barred
conversations
for those are
no
longer par for the course.
She’s
now getting closer to God,
demanding
that the next man
who
wants company with her to
head
down the same road.
It’s
a far cry from the
free-wheeling
nights where
she
and her friends dared to drink
and
dance with random men with
reckless
abandon. Today she walks
a
straighter line in search of peace
and
salvation, trying to leave
all
the partying behind.
Silence
is not golden;
it is owed.
So say those
who believe in
keeping the peace,
shouting down
voices that won’t
abide and stating
over and over again
what they believe
is true. But the
defiant ones that see
through the bullshit
keep finding ways to
make noise, keep
delivering their own
manifestos for they
know that sleepy heads
are arousing, rising from
conformist slumber, ready
to join ranks. Soon the
waves will come crashing,
drowning out the
status quo. Then they
will have to make payment
on their owed silence.
Sitting
in a parking lot
full
of pickup trucks
with
Confederate flags
and
gun racks adorned
in
their back windows, I
finally
found a moment
to
question why I had to
follow
these country boys
here. I guess somewhere
in
the course of my first
taste
of adult freedom along
with
youthful exuberance
and
the promise of beer, I
decided
to hop in the back seat
of
one guy’s beat up Chevy and
trek
far, far away from the
safety
of the college campus
all
because he and his roommate
knew
a guy who could get us
eager
but underage pups a
couple
of six-packs of
adult
refreshment. Something
should’ve
told me that their
country
twangs would lead me
into
unchartered territory, but
the
voice of reason may or
may
not have spoken to me or
I
was just a bit too loony and
just
wanted to do something else
beside
stare at my computer.
But
in that moment of sitting
in
that honkytonk of a
parking
lot, I wished I had
paid
attention and maybe I
would
not have found myself
here
in the middle of a
country
nowhere staring at
flags
and guns with visions of
hoods
and nooses dancing
in
my head. All I kept
hoping
for was that those guys
would
get back in this Chevy
and
drive away before any
of
the locals saw this brown face
that
was definitely out of place.
Lucky
for me no one did
and
we all got out of this
redneck
nirvana with what we
were
questing for and headed
back
to the confines of campus
where
we sat in my room,
drinking
the night away. That’s
when
the voice of reason broke
through
my buzzed state, speaking
clearly
the words I needed to hear:
Don’t you ever
do that again.
