Stay On The Road Poem by John White

'Stay On The Road' By: Jonathan Brown


You can usually measure my level of sanity by how my fingernails are. And right now my right pinky is a tortilla chip dipped in open-cut salsa. Don't ask me if my poems are true, I'm not a good liar. This is an open letter to my father:

Dear dad, I'm back stage pacing, bighting heavy a breath, lips stuck to teeth, my own leather tongue for breakfast. And a lung-full of smoke at lunch by the time dusk fades into night my time card is punched: Another night at the mike and its time to go to work. Hey but I'm just one of many word-smiths, crowd-surfing, curb-side emotional baggage, but when I'm up on stage playing wiffle ball with my own emotions and I hit a homerun that doesn't go past the third row, I still run the bases. My pay stub is a pile of yesterday's clothes that smell like smoke. In the morning I've got more friends who have passed that way from homeless than I do who've graduated college. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the fact that I run with the bulls. I keep company with propaganda masterminds, witch-doctors and other insomniac authors. I run with the pack of not so perfect prophets. Most folks I know spit their sole into peoples bones. And pops, I'm willing to stretch. Just imagine if my top lip could stay here, in South Carolina, my bottom lip stretched all the way to San Francisco. And in the middle, I spit, spit all over this country, but every time I come home for tour, just looking to lay my head, instead I get a broken heart minus a pace maker that even mom couldn't stitch up. The gears are stripped. The hinges need oil and my soul could use a bath but alas you look at me like I'm an alien. And when you look at me like I'm an alien it makes me want to hop back in my space ship and teleport off to the next granite planet and go be a rock star.

I know you want me to get a real job. I've never been good at crunching numbers or sweeping floors. But I can sleep on floors and I'm a decent word-smith and honestly I never claimed to be righteous and I know I'm not condemned. So while I'm on earth I'm gonna rain heaven and hell, both thank you notes for being my best friend, cause that's what best friends do. They're right here for you. I've seen hell disguised as a nine-to-five job and heaven behind a young boy's eyes in Prague. There's a fine line between living your dreams and sleepwalking through life. I'm leaping clean over sleepless nights forcing myself to stay awake, leaving a wake of insomniac day-dreams large enough to wash up on the wet sand of my real life.

And Dad: I called you on your birthday for the same reason people go to church on Easter Sunday. It's only a gesture. People who go to church on Easter Sunday wish they had a relationship with god like I wish I had a relationship with you. I just hope you understand I made a commitment to listen to the song within and I accept all risks that come along with spilling my soul into people's bones from microphones. Before I left for tour, you said, "stay on the road. And I don't know if that means don't fall asleep at the wheel, or don't ever bother coming home.