new slang

The streets all even out, the river lost far beneath the highway. The moon swelling in Sagittarius as I change lanes, hardly moving at all. The slow change from windows to mirrors, all this glass and steel speeding like an apology, leaning hard into the dark. Long past any call for prayer, I point in no direction. I drive long past the utility of any cherished myth.

It isn't just the hours pouring out this empty, the slip of time, the mutterings of desire. It isn't as if any one ever asks anything at all. Rooms to fill and empty. Traffic to direct. Dull hunger and blunt questions, the whole day spent just looking out. Curse the razor and that taste for blood. Curse the flesh as it turns to dust beneath the sun, only to arrive in the midst of such callow moonlight, another story left untold.

I think in steel and chemistry. I think in formulae and sheafs of dirty words. The movies play inside out, the songs end in all the wrong places. I long for poetry, for a still green moment, for an oath that doesn't break. The made up place, the fairy stories. The vague assurances that everything will work out, knowing just how that works. I think in memories and explanations flown from flag poles and caught in the coils of wire nesting atop some fence. I hear a song I used to know, trying hard to sing along.