Let’s Get Lost

Global Positioning System says
We always know your coordinates
But better than that
We have no need to know where you are
Because you do the job for us
Inner surveillance
Self-tracking mechanism
Fail-safe and worry-free

But I say
Let’s get lost
Drop our personas and disappear
For the longest lost weekend on record
Lasting the rest of our lives
Let’s say goodbye
To those tired old eyes in the mirror
Like a clueless guest
They’ve overstayed their welcome
Let’s say goodbye
To hustling back and forth
Between point A and point B
Believing we don’t deserve better
Let’s say goodbye
To same-as-yesterday jobs
Airtight families
Trance-inducing television
To the news we’ve all heard
A thousand times before
Let’s say goodbye
To cascading boredom

Boredom which guarantees
That even if we get rowdy
Even if we get loaded
Even if we get high
And leap out of rockets
Onto the far side of the moon
Even if we change our names
And re-enter the game
Plastic surgery
A fake passport
It’s never enough

Instead, the best medicine
In fact, the only medicine
Drop the whole thing
Don’t look back
We’ll drown our wristwatches
Enter a virginal landscape
No idea what time it is
No idea where we’re headed
Cruising the blissful unknown
Safe in each other’s company
Not caring who we are
Like grown-up versions
Of the children we once were
The children who were stolen from us

Michael Brownstein is the author of three novels, Country Cousins, Self-Reliance, and The Touch,as well as nine volumes of poetry. His most recent book is World on Fire, a take-down of corporate globalization and impassioned call for consciousness change.