2009-11-28

next bus

I lost my family in static. I sail alone into a personalized night of noise and hopeless isolation. Palm trees grey and die in the motel courtyard. All the vending machine food has expired. I hurt my head trying to swim in an empty pool. Cartoons are available only with a doctor's prescription. Professional bowlers choke on pornography and dusty comforters. We sculpt bars of soap into strange creatures after midnight. I'll go outside and see what the bug zapper has killed. Nazis fuck in the car port. I wear my father's jacket and journey to a secret meeting with Col. Sanders and Jim Morrison in the feathery loft of an abandoned warehouse. I told them about perspiration sticking to palm trees in dead hours of morning before the first bus hits LA. I woke up in gold grass outside Merced Falls. Someone I knew and may have loved has drowned downstream from the water mill. When I'm hungry I'll feed myself some wind if it blows this way. If I can catch it where my hands used to play. I miss you. And the big rigs lost from the interstate. Please, dear imaginary reader, tell me these lights in the sky mean something. That they mean something good. That there's a hand to hold at 3 AM in the bus station. When does the next bus leave Purgatory?