Travel Journal

The blank seduces desire.
You know you want to do it,
Discover that emptiness

The emptiness is hiding.
Over there, a car crushes
An oncoming bicycle.

The cyclist tries to leap clean,
But his legs are caught
By the car’s tires and destroyed.

One moment you’re on a trek,
A true solo adventure
Traversing long continents,

Having already pedaled
Eight-thousand kilometers,
And the next moment you’re flat

On your back in the desert,
Screaming since the body screams.
It’s never the injury

Itself that’s astonishing.
It’s the before and after.
New world you can never leave,

Never, encapsulating
A world now gone forever.
You’ve discovered emptiness,

You’ve entered the work of art
You wish you hadn’t entered.
Yet somehow you’re still longing

For that blank space of paper.
You’re longing for what isn’t
To make what can’t be better.