Friday, August 13, 2010

beneath the kingdom of shine

This world is so quick to disappear, to turn around and change its stripes. Familiar streets bend and split, sweating shadows, spilling light. Driving home the freeway changes again and again. I lose my bearings on roads I have traveled thousands of times. I lose my self a little amid the tail light constellation and the strange passages beneath the kingdom of shine. Darkness turns from valleys into towers, clotting the hiding places of the once was world.

Steel and glass and combusting gas-- the moment extends above the tarmac, it unwinds long into the night. The clock moves, the calendar changes. Time and date and a check-mark for the day that is done. The radio crackles news at a steady pace, even voices marking lapse and horror. Gentle voices bruising the very night.

I work the pedals and the wheel. I watch the gauges and the road. The Highway Patrol marks off another vague reminder, life so brittle and so swift. Lights flash, traffic slows, then a tragedy is marked and abandoned, our real lives somewhere farther. A few more miles, this handful of chameleon roads, and I am home. I work the locks and find the lights. Somewhere I cast another shadow. Somehow another day is done.

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