Drive

The middle-aged man scissor strides wide down the empty sidewalk across the freeway overpass around lunchtime. The intersection is always busy.

Blue painters tape he has wrapped around the left boot, black steel-tipped toed hooves which smack carelessly atop the gold and silver glittering cement in a usual left, right way.

He twists his swaying hands in fists, turning them clenched in and out of sync with his inefficient gait.
He sneers around and his hair is trim. He wears a buttoned-up baby blue collared shirt with light black bulging cargo pants, masking knobby legs to show he was prepared for anything.

He wasn't, clearly.

It was hard to tell where he was going faster than all the fancy new cars jammed atop the asphalt
all around him.

Two million dollars blowing smoke and going nowhere faster than he fidgets.

It is easy to think of all the miles he must have traveled and all the wealth he has casually passed by and free ways he must have walked over, all the while, the important ones are collectively waiting in line and he is wearing out his durable souls going somewhere, believing the blue tape will work better than becoming a new man,
just before I lost sight of him
for good.

Our Glasses

Something went wrong. It is not for me to judge the degree by which this may have led to the inevitable consequences that unfold like light impervious to degrees good or bad.

Something just went wrong. This was the effect of due course and not the cause or point of origin as though could be specified succinctly where the beginning of blame is compact and obvious by distinction between layers of strata in Earth, this was then, then this was now, this happened thus caused this blood red dirt; this era-something went wrong. There were clues, globules, and hints that worked their way to the surface by usual volcanic activity calling themselves tiny coincidences, granite is a stoic collector an enduring supporter, an acquired eye. Yes, clues, scree, I wiped my feet. 

By assemblage, it would be best to use a logic puzzle grid and if all else fails, guess and check. Usually, in eliminating all impertinent information or relevant and most necessary negative extrapolations, we come closer to what we are not.

Some words were strange, numerically out of context, standing in for something greater than one possibility which makes it difficult to decide if we should be made an ex or a why…

Those outward signs, the nose, the fingers and weak organs, not so subtly and not easily dismissed by nature or lack of nurture, this only made this one stand out from the others. The odd cast out so as not to interfere with even, truth, or interrupt the act of Life. All the world is a black stage, I only intend to learn my part as the understudy, minimally working on my costume, I exhume the dream of anyone seeing me, it was a dream.

Captive audience or made hostage, either way I do not recognize this scene so I am rapt up temporarily and I am convinced a line I know will come along soon even if it is not mine.

I have not found heart, I never looked outside. These people are not my peers. There are public spectacles with wire frames paneled in glass and called anyone’s dream home. I scream at that ugly transparency, opaque in an alabaster way, permeable and subject to influence and wavelength, shale and sand-stone, color yourself like granite!

Something went wrong. I wasn’t supposed to find out. Stranger in a stranger land, the hourglass sucks in sand. Something went wrong. It should be empty by now. It cannot express infinity that way but does, with or without me, good or bad, always.   

Painting by William Orpen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dis-order

Alone, I tried desperately, throwing myself like a slingshot to see how far I could get before being reminded I was still a baby boomerang until I finally had to marry someone to cut the ties to get far enough away from my past-my little town- the small minds and tiny tree cages or giant semper virens prison I grew out of, fathoms enough away to not hear or at least unintelligibly muffle the moans, which originated as screams it seems, the empty echoes, broken boughs, and out of tune heart-strings only to be yanked right back there, teleported as I took out the trash, and there-traveling down the street, coming at me, over fences instead of between trunks, the barking, the dogs voice, his protective tone, the accusatory way this bark comes at me and says, no matter where you think you live, your permanent resident is at my back and calling me to another place-time out of this distant expanding private space, and I shake slightly, trembling at the thought, this is PTSD…

I wash my hands of all GSR and trash after having aimed at the moon, shot an evil eye at the neighbor and caught a star that fell randomly into my lap. It told me its name was Experienca.

Artwork By McBey, James [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.