The wild and the wonderful

The Sun collapsed that night
Against the oil slick of a pastel wicked sky
Over the highway behind the Bridgeport exit
On that back porch where we sat and watched it die
Where the hills rolled like guttered bowling balls pinned in
folded and cut at the belly
Just chiseled right through with a strip mine screw
A missile the natives named development
In Grandview heights basement and all the way through
Toward the fulton field and basketball courts
Where I played as a youth
And later as a teen
flash forward to
Getting chased around and bullied by the same kids that were on my team
Growing up here adolescent friends...
seemed
to be friends
Until a crowd formed
And then not even a fairweather friend of sorts could resist a sunny day beatdown on the courts
They were all the same in order to be indifferent
If you didn't stand out no one could single you out individually
just cardboard cutouts of people
Going through the routine of what they were raised to believe
For God's sake it would be a shame to have an imagination
And break the small town babble since the plan was to relocate anyway
I can't say that running away was always the right answer
And that's become a cancer within the slowly degrading cells of these memories
When I question what if?
I had stood up for myself
What if?
I had let go that one time
Just released the volcano that lived under the mantle of my human core
And awarded some taunting soul the chance to weep and bleed relentlessly while I forgot who I was
And lost myself in the hole I had just created
The void that would supersede gravities foundation
While I tripped over rebar in body glove kicks wasted
on an adrenalin binge and purge
in so deep it looks like a surgery
But there's no anesthesia here for nursing
Just these words they used to commit suicide through me
hurting
Me
Questioning my worth was a hand me down occurrence 
second nature
Passed from blood and DNA structure
And my favorite Designer genes
From both my grandmothers
There was something in the water
Of the ohio river
A shimmer That loved to flirt
That mingled with the murk
That nourished the establishment of economic undertakings
Then walked away from an impoverished state and swept it under the rug complacent
That rug just happened to be a floodplain
And once it came to claim its worth
It birthed new venues along the banks  refurbished earthen sediment between the toes of my sandals and up to my ankles
Watching the waves of a river ripple against the glimmer of sunset
Reflecting the wisp of my leaf based bhindi cigarette
Was in essence Some of the best of my younger days
That place has a magic
It's in the hills
Not where they have eyes though
There ain't no safe passage there
Stay the fuck away from that shit
It's in the bend of the ohio river where it serpentines
Under the suspension bridge and the Fort Henry that I wrote about as a preteen
That welcomes you to Wheeling
It's in the marshes and the coves that are now the home of the Wheeling Island Casino
Where we would explore
Before it exploded into what it is now
It's in the old B & O railroad tracks
The ones they turned part of into a walking path
Tunnel green
where the masks of native spirits hang high up in the trees
And at night time the cicadas can mimic a rain dance like it was their first chance in 17 years to hit the stage and scream
We found gravestones at the top of that hill
That day that everyone was sick and we didn't want to sit and chill
We started walking the railroad
Underneath of the overpasses and hillside billboard masters of advertisement
Through the tunnel at one point
The darkness even ate my joint
And we wondered for just a moment
When we would see light again
We landscaped these hills with footprints
As they shaped my appreciation for life's good things
I wonder sometimes if they wonder about me
The woods I mean
I painted a lot of time while finding myself
Buried in a forest that appeared to be all mine and I was selfish
There was always a wealth of hiding spots whether they be overflow drainage pipes or under bridges or on top of rocks that sat precariously close to the edge of life as we knew it then
Those primal habitats were my genesis
And Sega hadn't even been patented yet
When super Mario became huge
the centrifuge of my existence seemed to be playing on owl court and watching Punky Brewster
It still haunts me to this day that I missed the Halloween episode
Staying out too late playing kickball and trying to speed home
Before dark
When curfew would start
And the hours seemed to pass longer like the sunrise was on delayed departure
And sunset was just an outlet for the party to get started
But the farther we travelled the more our feet gained traction
And I was attracted to the experience of watching the stratus collect above our path
The way the rain would separate the landscape from the leaf patter
That splattered on my glasses as I walked below branch gatherings and shattered bark broken statues from saturated shadows peeled off along the trailside
The days of our lives are the legacies we build
In the steps we take
And each choice we make
The future is only the product of our current state
Fulfilled
Enlightened
By learning
From every mistake