No man is as attentive to stoplights as the one who must leave his loved ones.

Crossing over the train tracks
to get to where you were
it wasn't that hard.

I never realized all the other obstacles I had to endure
until it was too late
until I stopped coming over.
A bridge, our high school, some shopping centers.
And stoplights. So many stoplights.

Sometimes, I still hear the train whistle from inside the depths of my room late at night.
I wonder if you hear it too, at 10:38 p.m. on Sundays,
and I wonder if you think of me.
But I never go that route anymore.

The silent street erupted around me the moment I sat down,
a thunder rumbles in the distance
but only reveals a passing truck.

The white swan drifts past
without elegance.

I watch the youths drive by on fish lane
as the silent score of stoplights
play to an impersonal audience-
tonight the pizzicato is on time.

----

The air is dense with quiet conversation
of nighthawks
and the splash  of luck
on a steel  tray.

Elegant servants of style remove the unwanted things.

12:30
The air has cleared,
alone again
with two fat asians.

When did boring become stylish?

GET ME OUT  OF HERE!!

"It is truly a free nation that offers pancakes 24/7"

----

Normally, the solitude of wandering a sleeping city would elicit poetry.
Tonight only nothing comes out.

Not the people nor the smells or secret music. Only the flicker  of a dying neon sun assuring me,
that the parking is open.

----

1:00 am.

A woman in a pink burkha enters a white car, only to be driven off into the night, followed by two taxis.

There are ancient trees twisting their tops through the modern facade. For eras, much like fashion are discarded by finicky time.

They have stood as silent sentinels for longer than I have breathed, and with any hope, they will stand as soldiers long after I  come to pass. These reminders of the ravages of time.

I loved a girl who lived  here once.
She lived in an apartment that overlooked the city
and had  ******* like two soft moons
that tasted like honey.

1:40 am.

Other nighthawks wander as wastrels through the quiet Autumn night,
with a slow, soft  gait one never see's in the rush of day.
If all evenings carried a beat, it would be thus:
a slow jazz drum.

"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!...."
would sound the echo of every evening heart
throbbing slow with power.
"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!..."

The car's carry  white  blood cells to  the  suburban arteries.
Taxi's are cancer.

I walk
northbound.

----

Cold beer at 2am.

Faintly lit menagerie
an open cage containing
nighthawks.

Well spoken Eastern girls
corporate white boys
two old tradesmen,
one on a smartphone with a rosary around his soft large neck.
The antique street curves away toward the river,
sloping up
then down
I follow it with my eyes.


And run them back
to the fairylights.
They hang like glowworms
or constellations.

Glowworms hang like constellations, the inside of their cave  is the same fleeting feeling of being alone with the universe, it being caressed by your eyes.
For you are its lover and its mirror.
Inside the glowworm cave, I felt like the universe and everything reflected  itself in miniature. That to look upon their hanging, blue stars you saw everything else.

Halt our shallow breaths--
         staccato fogs at the stoplights
Cling precarious in cold
like the frost on the stop signs.
The streetlights keep on winking
Winter's late but, now, it's sinking
                                       into bones
clawing coats
         shut. Clutching
                  wool to swollen throats

I swore I'd never stand here again
           at December's ******* doorstep--
ring the bell every weekend.
I always circle back every year
when
I take the same old punches
and wince when I hit play-back.

Halt my raising glass
        and analyze my afflictions:
28, alone and broke
so cop to addictions, now.
It's freezing--getting dressed
you've question marks in your brown eyes
It's hailing, breathing out
Carry my bags of old goodbyes
The walls just keep on shrinking
But the outside's gonna swallow me
                                    Eaten whole
even bones.
     Spit me out back on Mydland road

I know I'll wind up back here again.
         at December's ******* deathbed
sleeping in every weekend
Held all chips, played hands, drank a year
then
I pulled my vacant pockets,
defrosted my losing bets

Mea culpa. So long. Stay friends.

"Twenty-*******-five to one,
                      my gambling days are done.
I bet on a horse called The Bottle of Smoke,
                     and my horse..." (Finer/MacGowan)

the thick frames surrounding
my prescription perspective,
are the curtains to the ceaseless show.


the same charade everyday.


it's a 4-15 minute drive from my apartment to the campus.
4 minutes if the dark-humored, aliens that control stoplights are kind,
15 if they are looking for a laugh.


my feet hit parking concrete outside of classrooms.
it's rhythmic yet mundane.
but it's a game we all play.


i fall into line, the slow parade of apathy,
that leads us to lectures each day.


the professors project views of wicked youth,
we like white, pull-down sheets,
sport whatever image they insist,
so easily.


it's branded boys
and
tanning bed-inspired girls.
it's blind acceptance and
weightless regret.


i want to change lenses.
pull the curtain,
and start all over again.

sometimes my parents will ask me
"are you really going down that road again"
with such disdain and bitterness
and it just makes me so angry
because they do not realize that depression
is not a road one chooses to go down
and it is not a road one can easily exit
it is an unpaved road riddled with cracks and potholes
with no street signs or stoplights to guide us safely home
and to accuse someone of willingly taking that road?
well, that is how some of us end up there in the first place
-

Its like a broken
    stop light Flashing
      red          And    
    blue,           My heart
    won't        make up my
             mind.
       Yes           and no
   Stop.              Go.
      Like            A comet
     coming much too
               fast,
  I can't            wait for it to
  come               crashing in.
   Part of          me is terrified
           of the lasts,

But another can't wait
    for all the new firsts.
          Excruciatingly Terrified,
               Substantially ecstatic.

Driving around the metro
mindlessly going through
stoplights
and traffic
and intersections.

We said we didn't really accomplish much work -
just a single package claimed and delivered amidst the 7-hour drive-
but the endless laughter
until we were on tears,
the teasing,
the pinching and tickling til one gets hurt
were enough
to brighten my day.

And not to mention
that stolen kiss
and interlocking of fingers
-it was a moment but I knew we wanted it-
that made my day
into a blur
of coloured swirls and sparkles and magic.

You are always loved, Anne. I am just and still here waiting. :)

Yours and always yours,
Mims

"And 7-hours through the traffic - through endless stoplights, intersections and cop chases - there was a stolen kiss... And the whole metro blurred into a swirl of red lights and car horns and whispered wishes that the stoplight would never turn go." :)

I make trips to the corner store, at 12 in the morning.

Calling all cars to get the **** out of the road,
I'm swerving.

Calling all lights,
blink and be gone. Streetlights,
stoplights, lamps, lighters,
blunt tips, cigarette butts,
all lights be gone.

Dear Earth, get low in the darkness.

On my first trip,
I was accosted by rabid dogs who drooled shoelaces
and I could tell they were being hounded
by the kilter of their angry maws
and sawed-off minds.

They barked like guns.

And they saw me--completely irrelevant---
popping caps off Lokos
taking sips that could **** up an Orca,
completely swimming.

I had to kick them home.

At work today,
Someone got caught stealing five pesos worth of food,
and got threatened with a felony,
but they've got some lint in their pocket,
and knew how to keep it cool.

My girlfriend operates in ideas.

I've been at work for so long,
that I yell and walk around,
like I'm in the shower.