Chasing my shadow down a bright concrete river.
Slipping through time like wind through fallen leaves.
The Gods of motion attempt to confine me;
To limit my freedom;
To rip me from my machine and hurl me to the ground;
For my Audacity,
My Defiance,
My Arrogance,
For running the white line,
Of claiming control of my being,
and capturing the essence of the road.
A road they would claim as their own.
They whisper clever lies and falsehoods
Trying to convince me that I'm in direct contradiction
To Their Laws,
To Their Rules.
But I know better,
I know I am the master of motion.
I set the limits,
Not They.
I know how to balances the forces
That would tear me from this machine;
That would smash me like some insignificant thing
Against the sun baked whiteness of this concrete river.
I ignore them and they fade away,
Caught in the quagmire trap of my laughter.
I move On.
Riding the endless miles through endless minutes,
Within Time, yet without.
Within Space, yet without.
Within Knowing, yet without.
Within Thought, yet without.
Thinking destroys the moment, destroys the victory.
Seductive,
Serene,
Time out of time,
Moment out of moment,
The distant hills rush forward to greet me.
Soon,
Very Soon,
I'll be among them, immersed in the Zone once more,
To do battle with the primordial forces.
I climb the back of the dragon, his tail whipping,
Bone jarring shudders run down his spine.
Eyes flashing as he harkens to my call.
He sees me
He Knows me,
He fears me,
He knows who has always won this game we play,
He despises my mastery of him,
But that is as it should be,
It makes the game more real.
He tries to shake me from the path I've chosen.
To ride up his coarse and roiling spine.
To arrive at the top
And then back down.
Ever faster,
Ever closer to the edge.
He calls to the false Gods of the road for help,
But They heed not.
Still languishing in the quagmire trap of my mirth,
They respond only with cries of desperation.
I've already defeated them once
This time,
This Ride.
Their energy is no match for me,
This Ride,
This time.
I enter the realm of the Dragon's lair,
One side,
Hard flatness, thrusting upward;
The other,
Nothingness and non-existence.
A shear drop,
Defined by low ribbons of rough-cut rock and sparse metal beams.
Designed only to fool me with false promises of safety;
"I'll catch you if you fail!"
It proclaims with snake oil assurances
But I'll not be distracted,
I know the truth,
I've seen the lies,
Scattered in ruin by the side of the road.
I've been here too many times to be taken in by such deceptions.
Running countless hidden curves.
Beginning before arriving,
Sensing before seeing,
Tracing a single line through infinite futures,
Shedding the confines of the present.
I exist now only in the One Possibility
With absolute awareness.
A path chosen in an instant without thought.
I become the Future
Moving outside of time
Combining the infinite options.
Mired future-lines merged into a single future-point.
Rock strewn road,
wet with spring rain.
The dragon's spine is no child's playground.
It's reserved for those that know
and pursue the thrill
To ride the edge
between Heaven and Hell.
Knees kissing asphalt round each bend.
Body motions,
Weight shifting,
Side to side.
Brake,
Shift,
Throttle,
Shift,
Brake.
The mindless rhythm of a road dance sung to an ageless tune.
Tires clawing blacktop,
Leaving their marks of subjugation.
I revel in the sound of metal meeting pavement.
Leaving behind new scars,
New wounds traced over old.
Machine parts meeting earth they were never meant to know.
I Control the moment,
I Indulge my insanity,
I Command the road,
I Defy the Dragon!
Death pulls up and rides beside me, urging me on.
Trying to distract me from the road ahead.
Trying to drag me back into the present.
For he knows what I know,
He's learned what I've learned.
In this wild escape,
In this wild place,
The only hope is to exist in the future,
To slip into the present for even one moment,
To allow a single moments hesitation,
Or one stray thought,
Is to let the Road Gods win in a game where Death Takes All!
Reaching the head of the dragon, blazing in the light of conquest,
I surrender my control for an instant of revelry,
To absorb the moment and lock it within
Before descending once more,
The conquering hero of the Road.
As our eyes meet, my nemesis and I, I smile the conquerors smile.
In his last moments
He makes one last desperate attempt to dislodge me,
He shudders,
He squirms,
He hates to lose,
But then;
So do I!
Having been defeated once more, he too, like the Gods
Fades into distant memories.
For I am mortal while he is only an image formed in my mind.
A vehicle to transform a road into an image of something more.
A vision,
A dream
On which to ride,
To feel the edge of life.
To know and understand the thrill of facing death.
To ride as though knowing:
Each journey, the last ride.
Each heartbeat, the concluding effort.
Each instant, the final moment.
There is no other approach
To overcome the fear;
Of falling,
Of failing,
Of dying
In some lost place, high in an ancient palace of light,
Filled with the memories of past riders who have come and gone.
Those who survived and left their memories for me to ponder their successes.
Those who did not and left their bones for me to contemplate their mistakes.
I've come home,
I've sensed the road,
I've mastered the machine,
I've conquered the Dragon;
And we are One!