Riding ‘round in a burgundy Mercury Tracer.
Purple lean dripping down
the falsetto wails of crying doves.
Prince sounds like the devil
through theraflu fog banks that
clash against candy apple interiors
of a crashing rocketship keening
down i-95 tail lights.
So here I am:
No one.
Nowhere.
Nowhere.
My cat was killed last week
by a dirt bike stunt.
Jumping the curb
and skidding into my yard.
It’s good that she’s dead.
She was the part of me that
needed to die: the fluffy part,
the kindness that needed killing.
The vacuum left by love
was filled with the sacred wish
to immolate myself like the Vietnamese
protesting the war. Like a Tibetan monk
mourning for Shangri Lai.
My cynical friend shattering
the one final myth with ‘you know no one does that any more, right?
The flames, the ash. It’s all CGI.
Pixar and Dreamworks co-produce all the suicides
in a Pasadena studio.
But before my cynic can destroy fantasy,
I am an incandescent pyramid,
a tinder-ed pyre.
Full-lotus gasoline doused pose
in the middle of the highway
as I bring the smoldering
cigarette to my scalp.
A surrendering ‘whoosh’ and crackle.
I open my mouth to scream,
the flames leap down my throat.
My lungs burst into twinkling cinders,
Truckers chain yank the horns
of their 18-wheelers, masturbating
to my shrine of flames.
My jaw dissolves unhinged
and my chin cranes open
and my tributary tongue tumbles out
laid roadside like police flares.
Caution. Slow down. You are about to miss an accident
to rubberneck. A scenic selfie.
My body rocks and keels over like a pot of chalk
shattering open an ashen cloud.
Here I am
No one
No place.
Shuffle playlists
jumps to the Beach Boys
added merely for irony,
their surfer blond harmonies
echoing through operatic streets.
In my car’s cup holder is
the candle flickering glow of amateur stunts on my iPhone,
playing ping pong with my eyeballs and road lights.
The stuntmen: runaways, drug addicts, sexually maimed
and abused refuse hauled into highway motels
Termite panels shaking
from the 75 mph curtains.
Truckers blasting through this no place.
moving past without a glance
at the $10/a day room lights, camera, action.
And in this boarded-up town, in this lost state
rusting from nostalgia’s tears,
hitch hiking faggots hang at the
gas station glory hole,
hoping to find someone to cargo them to the next nowhere,
crucify or slice their throats into extinction.
The stuntwomen pimped into hash
and haggling 30% more for double penetration,
they say it’s for the kids,
but the railroad on her arm tells it differently.
Sunglasses and wig shuttering
from the 75 mph pelvic pumps,
jacking her forehead into the molding bedboard.
Here I am. Again.
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