Drag Poem by Dark Days

Isn't one place where the Drag won't hit you.
It's not just the theaters with the dirty pictures.
Solemn faces sniff synthetic flowers.
Nicotine need in the morning hours.

Catching up on sleep in the passenger's seat,
dreaming of the one that left, how she'd still look sweet.
Twenty-something nobodies, once children so bright,
serving out life sentences under flourescent lights.
And this Drag
can't be lifted off your back.
It doesn't ask questions;
don't expect any back.

So I packed all of my things in a little black backpack
and decided to hit the road like Kerouac.
I didn't get far, no, I didn't get anywhere:
I choked and my knees grew weak for that head of hair.

She introduced me to a world where my fears didn't count;
it took me by surprise just how easily they drowned.
It all seemed so clear, once I'd learned to shut it out,
and every time I think about her, that part of me comes back out.
But that Drag
never crawled off of my back.
It's in each home,
between each sidewalk crack.

Does it really matter where I go from here?
Would it make a difference
if I made a big commotion
about the things that I hold dear?

How beautiful and tragic, the face I saw today,
of a woman in the produce aisle fighting her decay.
There are several hundred things I wish I'd asked her,
whose body was a clock, ticking to disaster.

She probably dreamed of love that she probably didn't find:
it was all as clear as day in those stormy, gray eyes.
One could tell that in her youth she was quite a sight,
but the Drag had surely drug it out of her, alright.
Drag, Drag, Drag,
Drag, Drag, Drag.
We didn't ask for it,
but sure enough,
it had always been
a part of the contract.