Five years or more
Or perhaps less,
Does it matter to you
Or me?
Isn't time a relative measure
To make sense of other conducts.

I was here, this city
My idea of the west
That still can and will
See me as of this land.
People were bright,
Were too busy in their lives
To yell at you about the dent
In the car's bumper,
People would narrate so.
That was to me, a declaration
Of our true values.
Probably that's simply a story now.
But either my mind grew
Or the things,
Who will attest to it?

In my car, the fan on full blow,
The heat musty though,
The sun burning with a new found motive.
In this city of people with hearts,
I looked out my window,
Rarely looking ahead,
Maybe this is why I fail
To memorize roads,
Or streets in my own place.
But the car halted and
The driver mumbled,
The accent a lovely northern,
One that sounds too polite
To instill any fear,
To pass as a slur.

My eyes darted ahead,
So calmly the man in the driver's seat
Sat, his both palms griping
The wheel a little too loose to turn,
His heavy chin on the back of his hands,
His back arched forward,
So calm and serene.
The man on the bus,
Sat same, his back though
Stretched way too forward
From his seat,
The distance greater,
He, struggled to keep that pose.

Both man on the wheel stared
Through the double windshields at each other,
If I didn't know better
I would say they were friends
Playing games.
If I didn't know about the traffic,
Blaring horns louder more by the second
I would say it was a new game
Likes of the bull and the matador,
Tad bit less dramatic,
And less action and work.

But my mind grew,
And I could tell this was a fight,
Raging between the eyes,
The victims of the peaceful blows,
-Everyone behind them,
Beside them.
Other people screamed at both,
None flinched,
Them, as sturdy as their vehicles,
The elders grew despondent,
I couldn't stop looking at them.

This was a quiet revolution
Of the new age,
The calm, polite age
And I wanted to watch it bloom,
Like a sunrise,
I wanted to clap to it
And yet not disturb it.
This was on a busy street,
Two men on their thirties,
Fighting for what they believed in,
In their own way,
It was funny
But it was also beautiful.
(I knew both of them were wrong.)

The driver curved around them
And my view was a passing glance
Again.

Here I sit, king of my wheeled domain, my neighbors’ kings of theirs. On a river of internal combustion, pavement and tendrils of black tar reaching. Creep forward at a pace matched by snails, dammed by glowing red lights. Free to think thoughts entirely my own. A peaceful space in a hectic world. A horn rips through the peace, someone too caught up in there busy schedule, there's nothing I can do, I’m as stuck as you. Breathe, relax, let the current flow. We will all get where we need go.

The rain splashing against my car's windshield, as it is flung from another car's tire.
The whoosh of air across the roof.
That audible shift when driving surfaces change beneath the vehicle.
“Click Click Click”
The blinker chimes, as I wait to turn left.
As I turn, the steering wheel groans with the car’s leftward weight shift.
I yawn.
Traffic goes on.
I glance to the billboards littering the highway’s landscape.
One reads; “Does advertising work? Just did!”
Hardly.
A sharp honk heard from behind. I had been daydreaming again.
My hands rise up apologetically as I press my foot to the gas and drive on.
I miss her.
"Stop, not now." I mutter. "Drive on."
So I drove on.

I saw a car burning on the side of the road;
Two passengers and police standing around it,
like a campfire;
I'm not sure if someone was still inside

…But I saw a gap in traffic
and turned away,
knowing I could drive faster down the 405 --
if only for a couple seconds --
and look in my rearview mirror
having forgotten where the smoke
was coming from.

I think it was pop....yes, the Hinoi Team, among others.  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i3VCVHzTAY]



(sonnet #MMMMMMCCXLI)  

Rain.  Streetlights hemmed by ghostly mists' detail
Watch cars line up to scatter in a sense
Upon their ways, and it is late, for hence
We do not listen to beat music's scale
Of "happy" thet I'd smile for ere, the pale
Eye of these sent'nels blacker night'd fringe thence
Our silent what? as he talks of defense
In sheer forgetting, like I knew'd avail.
None knew quite why my cellphone's covrage poor,
And I suppose in retrospect, laughed to
Themselves for how I'd sit there so demure
Without my ride, the libry's bench wet too,
Me wrestling with that slim device sans cure.
I oiled my boots for sloshing puddles' crew.

03Apr17a

Shell gas station with little neon green palm trees
perched upon the edge of the frenzied freeway,
          a picture of plastic paradise
     strewn with bright green lights
     like spotlights of limelight
     shedding light upon city life
               never far from the dark side...
    
     nearby, I spy
an assortment of street signs
to guide you into the night,
     so turn right, & drive right
     fly past the stoplight
     into the glare of red light
          & beware the districts of night life

Roads keep on teaching us new lessons in violence,
rage is the law ruling the perfectly chaotic traffic
you are left to fend yourself in this murky waters
where killer whales celebrate the success of  blood thirst.

Men who don't properly breath are atrocious on roads
behind the wheels,they jump signals, break rules
as if their poor mamas made them promise to do all this!
a law  to send such cases to yoga class would do good.
But women with bad driving skills as their assets for life
are no less, in making our lives on each journey miserable

In a road where with impunity, suicide squads operate
your poetic musings, will have to stop, to remain alive.

Just then a police car with a roar stop in my front
authority makes me weary but the cop  behind the wheels
a woman, tells me the story of beauty than a cop's authority
on how beauty softens heat that makes muscles go stiff
She springs out of the cabin of the vehicle she is in
making ripples feminine and also ease in the air.

violence of the machines and the minds in controlling,
speed, broken rules and the thrill of chasing criminals
beauty which brings a change where it is out of place almost.

As I drift in to sleep, after a long drive safe,and few stiff drinks
in my dream's window she sits winking,'drive safe all through life'
"Good by my good cop"I whisper "be soft and right,authority is mess"

89.2

An animal that was there all along
is recently discovered,
recognized for behaviour now considered odd.
A lizard sheds it's skin to avoid predators.

101.89

So what constitutes a mass,
the accumulation, or the loss?

We continue to find faults of our own in order
to forgive the faults of others and their own.
Justice is when everyone is a victim.

To dilute the issue, to divide the tissue
is the diplomacy a broken line speaks in equal measure.

92.16

Children of immigrants
dust off their melanin when it trends

Pain fabricated as public art
as an act of instigating peace
as if war were not reason enough

static

the wound is not lost though the skin changes

predators and victims and recently discovered animals
share station on the radio

As wheels
spinning in traffic

Stuck in traffic,
On my way home,
Baby wait for me,
You won't be lonely anymore,

Stuck in my mind,
Is your smile and laugh,
I'm burning in my heart,
Can't wait to be in your arms,

Staring at the tail lights,
Wish I was in a truck in front of mine,
Minutes feel like a day and night,
And I can't wait for that greenlight.