a combination of inattention
fog-slick streets,
and the bravado of an impatient tailgater

a blurt of adrenaline that comes from seeing
not being
(un)able to avoid the car in front,
managing to swerve at the final moment before

impact
clip the corner,
bumper skittering off to the curb

checklist: license, insurance, don’t admit fault, exchange info, leave the scene.

The other guy didn’t care about all that.

I have never hit anyone in anger.
I didn’t want to hit this guy.  Again.
He wanted my wallet
grabbed for
(don’t admit fault)
cash reassurance instead of having insurance
to repair the damage I made
(don’t admit fault)

did this just turn from an accident to a mugging?
a happenstancial battery?

the illogic
demand
froze me

So I hugged him.
embraced him
wrested him
to the ground gently

The move felt elegantly slowly balletic
but came with bruised ribs, broken glasses, black eye
as he magically turned into four passenging kicking friends.
exchanging violent info

My stitches were removed immediately and eventually.

I had to laugh as they left the scene
The only thing he couldn’t check off the list was insurance.

Threaded through
with stories with clues
fish and fire and
flashes of fury and sounds of silence
a life in a slurry sung by a choir
of the everyday meh
conveniently ephemeral stoically yet
there’re poles sinking in the water table
fleeting as the flash of embarrassment
that’s freed from a fast accidental fable
and the blink out bubble of recollect
in a tug catching or or having been caught

heard it from a friend you were messing around
Grapevines and Central Valley heat
Cumular columns standing guard
The desert beaten beneath

Thunderstorms and
lightning caught by the horizon
distance makes it safe
and beautiful

Under the cover of a train station platform
with the drying redolence of ozone
recently flashed and deluged earth
ephemeral sluices and pools sopped
quicksilver in vanishing retreat

put me there with today’s brain
just for a snap
and that’s what memory is.
Overwriting the initial experience
always with the fog of distance
and the clarity of apparent wisdom gained

does that sunfilled drizzly moment remain
because of what I was thinking precisely then?
or is it copied into crazy contortions
distorted from the original cut

hazy reverb
autotuned into absolute pitch
by time’s perfect ear
a greatest hit engineered by millions
of tiny producers?