Riding Round w/ J

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.

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.