Off The Rails

Bryan Myers

I have seen the open road across America, and
like those writers before me: there’s not much left
to say

I held a harp in my hand that I kept in my pocket
and at a gas station in south Texas, some guy told me
this world
was
mean

I laughed and wrote about it in a blog
and the whole point of being a writer was to write about
life

to live in a free country
dying
off the rails
I likened that to being more important than making money
or
earning a living, rather
how
could I
be
free?

and then after Austin, Texas, and elsewhere in Colorado, San Francisco, and
medieval spiels
in my mind parked in a Honda Accord in South Jersey, I wrote about
my
life
in a dying democracy
where even with the election of Barack Obama, I wasn’t fooled

but sure enough
almost everyone else

was.

Bryan traveled to 12 countries in 2019. He spent most of the pandemic in Vietnam, writing poems, stories, plays, his first full-length screenplay, and a pilot he optioned to an app startup for $500. He’s self-published 15 books. (bryanwilliammyers.com) (Twitter: @bryanwillmyers)