Your skin is mist,
like cold before a storm,
to the touch

Palms are hydroplaning
an essence of something
that's about to change

watching the raindrops
splatter on my windshield
much like bugs do
when the weather outside
does not match my eyes

watching the windshield wipers
float the rain
off the glass, and on to the road
wishing i had my own
so my rain wouldn't fall
into my lap

watching the tears
and minutes old raindrops
soak into my jeans
and chill my skin to ice
so it matches your heart

watching knuckles turn white
as i grip the steering wheel
fighting the spot in my mind
that nudge
telling me to leave the tarmac
and seek my guardian angel

maybe just like the bright sun
stopped the rain
my angel will stop my tears

If you’ve ever hydroplaned
You’ve felt the wild slide of wheels leaving pavement
While your heart’s in your throat as you wonder
If you’ll land calmly on the other side
Or go careening into a tree

It is this feeling that has gripped me since I fell for you
And my life has been a blur of racing heart
Uncertain how to maintain self
While tumbling chaotically through partnership
Terrifyingly exposed
Bewildered and aching
Because loving is so much

I will offer everything I am
And spin out of control
But I don’t know what comes after
Or after
Or after

The engine's warm now that we're finally off all the main streets,
and sitting in the polished seats of our smooth white metal stallion
we strolled down the slickened scenic highway, silhouetted by the sun beams turned silver
bouncing off the cold bold face of a spherical moon.
The radio licks its numbered teeth back and forth with its spike red tongue
as the knobs are turned to tune and turn up high to hear,
those greats croon
"don't worry babe, we'll be there soon".
My foot falls heavy like a rejected lover when we hit the strait aways
and the wind cant move my whop slick hair on this bright night
can't move it for a **** thing
even with the top down and the whole world spinning against us.
I race to stay within the nights dark complexion
watching out for the only man who can slow me down
pink faced clown lookin to shout "bookim"
"Bookim danno".
My hands wrap white knuckled around the steering wheel
and I chuckle at the frightened look that begins to build up in your gorgeous hazel eyes
when adrenaline filled i swing wide left
to pass the only other car
on this rickety two lane highway.
Back on our side of those magical golden lines
I reach over to settle your shaking thighs
and you grab my arm like it alone could save you.
I picture us
hydroplaning off into a deadly roll through that golden field of wheat
the last thing I would smell would be dirt, dew, fresh spring ground
I smile at the thought
whatever makes you feel better I say
and so you squeeze tighter.
I slip my hand down and off your leg,
up onto the dash
to find and twist the radio ****, blasting out that sweet silky serenade of sleep walking.
I look over and blow a kiss,
but the wind ***** it out the back before it ever reaches your loving lips
and with eyes back on the road I keep on till morning.
Till I can stop with you at sunrise,
and we can rest
and hold hands
and share lips
and tell empty promises, as day breaks on the horizon
and light floods over us
in this stolen drop top caddilac.

Falling asleep with a mind
full of caffeine
and fever dreams,
the wanderlust saddens you
as the hallway light slowly flickers
into tangible nonexistence.
Spirits assault your shell
of vice and cold monologue
as you dream, tapping into your
infantile fears of smoke and mirrors
and waking up with
one lifetime too many
hanging over your head.
Rain stings against shingles
sending your thoughts
hydroplaning into silence.
Thunder flashes against
the background of sirens
and missed phone calls.
The weather forecast looks grim:
Slightly cloudy, with a
one hundred percent chance
of remembering who you've been.
Anticipation...

Death's mask is a mirror,
he is us
we watch ourselves slumber
waiting for each breath.
You listen closer,
trying to find a song
within the static,
human fragility
at its finest.

Petrichor presses against
your window pane, threatening
to intrude on your atmosphere
of Viceroy smoke and mildew.
The clock ticks closer to midnight
and your vision smears like
a watercolor painting under a faucet,
slowly sliding into blankness.

Corroding off in wreckless control
Repeated lines stretching infinitely in ambiguity
Sharp muscle relaxant mistakes
As we career off the road
Into a ravenous singularity
We are unforgiving, cynical yet synthetically joyous
Quick to pardon
Whipped with a gold leash
Delicate, leaves, Celtic music
Rubik's cubes in our throats
We're ready to let love in, willing
Nova tech, drunk masks and indication
Indignation, we clutch, we fail
Partial to conditions
Stones out of focus

Accelerate
Engines bleed borders
You are the free way
Impotent with quartz remnants
Ruins to our fantasy
You hide history
Covered in my burrow
Braking until necks break & bags burst
Powdered hair, liquid lips
Let's drive home
Go beyond the limit
Break each others bones
And crush our entities
Suffocate on suffixes
Her explanation acquits the doubt
As we appear closer than we may actually be
Industrial stacks stretch towards invisibility
Letting go of their concentrate
Gelatin mind
levitate into connection

Cups turned upside down
Entrapping ego in near vacuum
Aqua ducts bouncing off feline eyes
2 & a 4
Perfect air in a foreign atmosphere
Spinned on axis, ways to conduct
Your supply
Secede madness
Eternal order
Lungs sharply inhale with uncertainty
Hydroplaning your attempts at adultery
Decision was never your thing
Unmoving at every turn
Passion with objects
Reactions flicker between humility

It gives gifts
Your skin melts to the touch
Chocolate in magma
Molten sound deafens drench
Jealous mess, dividend
Hugging and dripping black with stability
Back, holy scripture written with integration
Sealed with treachery, acetate photography
Capturing clear innocence
Boredom and sinfulness
Spiked militant
Pencil drawn neuroses, veil
Bow down to schematics, we're radar
Sonar structure solar
It's all part of the process

I dropped her off on the other side of the city
Lights blur past my window
And I lose focus
A different kind of space travel

I don’t know why I drove here instead
The house on Ellen

I had always imagined it as a sad thing
Keeping the shape of comfort
Waiting lonely for me to come back to it

The shattered window
And the holed walls
The singed edge crop-circle in the living room carpet

I broke in
The place smelled new
Like fresh paint
And good credit

I am not a vandal
But these places don’t feel like home
Unless something has been broken

Tonight
It was just a lock

My tires hugged the road like it didn’t want me to be there
Like hydroplaning without the rain
And every red light turned green
Just after I hit the breaks
Like a bully placing a hand on my chest and then saying
“Nah, I’m just ******* with you. Keep on going.”

There’s this place I sleep most nights
Only
I am still in the parking lot writing this
And I don’t want to go upstairs yet

By my parking place
Frogs ribbit
They sound content
Though they live along the water drainage line that seems like a stream
Only there are more flies and crickets to eat here

Home is a funny place
So I have decided this

Not that I believe in God but
I’ve decided
His hands are as big as the world
So big it is easy to feel like no one is holding you
Even when you're being hurled a million miles an hour

And maybe that is why I feel I have no home
I mean
Hold me like you are small too

every memory ends up like a kamikaze airshow,
where they end up hydroplaning on the air in
panic during the most vulnerable moments,
and the crash leaves demolition and a small
indention in the creases of my skin. my pain
is broadcasted to an audience of one, myself.
my name does not end up in the history books
nor does yours, but the pain still broadcasts
itself on the theater screen inside the crown
of my skull. it is like watching a kamikaze
airshow, where the planes are aimed towards
me. i wonder if it's just me in the planes or
if you have many different lives and it's normal
for you to die so many times and not feel pain.

- kra

Hooded hitchhiker of haunted hours!

(Or haunted houses, as the mainstream would have me believe)
Somewhere between New Mexico and New York the tables must have turned - see, it's not you that's seeking a ride, but me

(If a ride is what the kids are calling such a sweet and final relief these days)

Life is indeed "a highway" but I missed the EXIT HERE when overcome with the sight of your dusty bone-dry thumb creeping out from underneath a solemn black bell
(And they said I slow down for nothing!)

My curiosity intensified when: I glimpsed you behind a hydroplaning semi, just north of the Missouri River: I was going left from the right lane and I shouted to you: "hop in!"

Your blatant denial leaves me wondering...
(do you feel as though you are above me?)
(are there Escalades in the underworld?)
(does a '98 Volvo wagon not convey the utmost message of doom and despair?)

To clarify things, please observe the billboard on your passenger side:

I AM RECKLESS, I AM LETHAL
I AM HALF-BLIND AND SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL
DOING 90 ON AN UNPAVED ROAD
FINGERS DUSTING STEERING WHEEL
TIRES DUSTING DITCHES

(Please keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times - unless you'd rather not)

Oh, robed and rusty reaper!
My consensus is this:
- I will not seek you out, but
- I
- will
- not
- turn
- you
- down

(Our final joyride looms just outside my rearview mirrors and directly inside my stream of consciousness)

The road was shiny slick with glissoning rain as I flew  down the highway,
Owl city's voices hymed through the poors of my radio,
"When I'm far too tird to fall asleep"  they say,
A car rushes round the corner so I switch my lights to low.

A Buzz or two,
A twinckle light luminates the middle concile,
U coming home baby? We miss you:(

Heh,
I miss u2

A little  girl goldest hair  you can  think of pops into my head,
"Daddy" she says  arm streched wide inviting,
"Welcome home, Daddy," the lovliest women  you'd ever seen said,
I walk in and the aroma of chiken, mash patatos, and fresh cut bean meet me I'm home in time for supper that's supprizing.

God it's so late,
My headlights chase after the yellow dashed line,
Buzz When you get hom we should go on a d8
22 miles till home says the sign.

Such a long drive,
but to where I'm going it's worth it,
into bed's the first place I'll dive,
all the rain glows like a candle that's lit.

Buzz We can't  wait 2c u:)
Reply me 2

I set me phone on the dashboard as I start to round the mountian's sleek edges,
Rain sets the road like ice,

Buzz! I love you;)

In the distance apears yellow wedges,
My breaks are squeaking mice.

Hydroplaning we lose control,
My head bashes gainst the air bag,
driffting away is my soul,
Head hung eyes sag.

Buzz *I love you

This journal
Is on the journey
Of a young man
Learning to run
After his first steps

Tried tricycles
For quite some time
Now riding
Without training
Free wheeling
And still in motion
By cycles
Of
Trial and error

New skills
Compensate slips
When quick hands
Can’t stop
The falling

No hands
On down hills
Still kicking
Not quite standing
Moving
While sitting
Still with it
With every minute
I’m lifted

Handling
My direction
Handle bars
Hold the
Reflection
Mirrors on either side
Eye’s focused
Front and behind

In line
Like skates
Though grinding
Set’s off a sign
Brakes
Wearing thin
No stopping
In my lane
Flying like
Hydroplaning
Off wet roads

Uncontrolled

They say one thing leads to another
but I wish that wasn't so
how does One Stop racing
One thought... then the next
They all used to be good and suddenly without warning  they just
turned around
Did a 360
Like I did on that dirt road at 17 thought we were going to die
Laughed afterwards... Adrenaline Junkies but now it makes me want to cry
wondering why I didn't die
From double lung pneumonia or the
anaphylactic shock when I was really young that penicillin
Hydroplaning off the road,
jumping an 8-foot Stonewall and having the car crushed to my chest
No one could see me in the down there
in the rain even my brother drove by
Couldn't breathe but somehow I made my way out with broken ribs down the road to a phone
that's all I remember about that
Endless stories of trauma I wonder if everybody's life is a city of it
like mine
I can only imagine it is
The terrible thing when your fight-or-flight response is all messed up
Looks like more than a Crossroads
Looks like an endless maze
Covered in a murky Haze
I hope I can find my way back though going to be a while...
I know the brain is a miraculous friend
I'm thinking way too much
They say the more intelligent we are
the more difficult it is to recover
so I wish I was less intelligent now
Or at least I could close this Pandora's Box
The memories that go round and round like the car in the parking lot that I kept spinning till it the engine died
I keep wondering if all that was just a dream
like getting thrown from the horse
There's a whole lot more that I got to shove
into a bottle
every time they're inside my mind
and I chuck them out into the ocean
hoping that they smash and burst on the shore and I will return to who I was
once more....
Keep focusing on the fact that there are more good days and bad
Try to look forward instead of looking back try to keep track of what's important
Right now I guess that's me.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

Do not brake
Do not accelerate
Just coast
I am traveling over icy bridges
With deep puddles diagnosed as a mood disorder
But my new doctor thinks its something more along the lines of mania
Just like my aunt
*** holes and cracks in asphalt leading to depressed down falls
Speed bumps filled with anxiety
And a deadly black ice keeps me slipping
Till I’ve lost the little control I had
I’ve started hydroplaning into guardrails made of razor blades
Every time I think I’m in the clear
Onto a warm sunny road
The freezing rain comes back
Blinding me
And I have to travel on another bridge, longer than the last
There are people honking at me to move faster
But I’ve been in car accidents before, I know the damage they do
I do not wish to be flipped over guardrails
A side show for people to slow down and gawk at
I will just coast and deal with the honking while I go over anxiety bumps
And try to avoid depressed cracks
I will not break
I will not accelerate

I wish I could play the piano
or something else lovely like that
so I could come home every night
and play the keys that make you cry
before we sat down to eat--
I'd set the table
and you'd wipe your eyes

we'd eat quietly,
conversing through scraping forks,
porcelain against metal
and sidelong smiles between bites--
words are overrated anyway
and what's there to say?--
I'd watch the strays you missed,
liquid tragedy crawling down your cheeks
drawing mascara highways
and I'd imagine driving on one of them,
hydroplaning dangerously close to your skin
as a piano plays somewhere up high--
I suppose I'd need a boat instead

I wish I could paint landscapes
or something else beautiful like that
so I could travel to the mountains
on rainy weekends
and bring them back for you
I'd hang one on our wall
you'd watch the birds' still circling
high above the snowy peak
right before you fall asleep on the couch

I'd spend my weekdays
pulling stars from the sky
with old paintbrushes and older canvas
while I wait for the moon to fall into the lake
so I can swim in and take it home
I'd show up on our front porch steps
all sodden smiles and dripping clothes
holding it under my arm
and you'd let me track water in
all the way to the bedroom
so I could hang it above the headboard
where it'd stay for simple nostalgia
"remember when we caught the moon?"

I don't feel like I'm slipping through the center of the earth.
The molten core won't char my shoes
And singe my hair.

No more quicksand paved roads
******* me in like a hungry mouth with no teeth.

Hydroplaning is a thing of the past,
Because it's not raining on my parade anymore.

if i should live
a hundred-hundred
lifetimes
i could die
ad infinitum
with no small
measure of joy
at a ripe old age
so long
as i never forget
your voice.

minor chords
in a haunting tone
purr from the car stereo—
late-night drive,
yellow glow
beneath interstate
street-lamps
interspersed
by passing headlights.

bound for a town
i hate, but carried
along by a firm, gentle
cadence. a vocal chord
melody coloring incessantly
outside the lines
of my psyche.

hydroplaning daydream
of kaleidoscopic color,
whispering insistently—
tempting me—to commune
with the gods and ****
the masters.
transport me
to your aurora
cosmic multicolor,
sonic wavelengths.

I will do the things
I'm afraid to do

I will drive a car without thinking of
Hydroplaning and rear-endings
I will carve my name into walls
Without thinking about vandalism
I will write this poem on my phone in the bath
Without thinking about electrocution
I will talk to the tall looming figure,
Whoever they may be,
Without looking down on myself
I will read you this poem
Without thinking its even true
I will tell my friends I love them
Without needing them to need me
To love them
 I will tell everyone I'm scared
Without thinking about it being true
I will leave home
Without thinking about comfort
I will get a job
That isn't always comfortable
I will make things that don't have power
Without thinking they need to have power
I will flirt and fall into some arms
Without thinking about the falling part
Or whose arms they are
And I will make love
And I will push away my love
And I will make love with someone else
Without making myself think about
The others I've made love to

But I will think about the others
I've made love to
Because they may not always seem worth
The fear I had to drown in
In order to gasp for air
And I will quit my uncomfortable job
Because I will think I have the right
To never be sweaty under the eyes and arms
And I will delete my friends
Because I stopped talking to them
A year ago when I made love the last time
and quit my job
And I will move back home
And I will stop driving myself elsewhere
And I will stop letting the world know
I have a name
And I will stop writing poems in the bath
And I will stop taking baths,
And I will stop writing poems

And I will try to do these things
I'm afraid to do.

I drive down the slippery road of life
Where constant sliding is my plight
As rain pours onto the road at night
Encouraging my car to take flight
To extinguish my headlights

I can’t see through the rain
Hitting my windshield pane
Becoming my banal bane
Inside my flooded lane
Causing a sedative strain
Until only the vigilant remain

Eventually the tread wears off my tires
In this slippery mire
My situation dire
I want to retire
But can’t find a buyer
Who can help me get drier

I start violently hydroplaning
Forgetting my entire training
When my tires are skating
My white knuckles aching
As every moment is taking
An eternity of shaking

I still think I’m driving
But really I’m sliding
Chaos abiding
Uncontrollably riding
Through God’s designing
While never arriving
To the place I’m pining
Before I started finding
This road to be so winding

Riding in the backseat,
Picturing a stampede—
I want to know the feeling of my body collapsing into itself beneathe the
Twisted Metal.

Now we’re hydroplaning,
The foxes must be waiting—
I want to transcend the life I’ve known,
Because only broken girls turn the
Other Cheek.

Roaches scale my tiny legs
Close my knees so they can’t lay eggs,
I want to disappear into the woods and live among the wild hogs
And Sleep.

Cruising on my way, aye
Cruising on my way, aye
Moving on the highway
Moving on the highway
Line by line passing time
Line by line last in line
Slow but steady, I am ready
Rain and the wipers move
My car slidin' through
Like a snake slither
Hydroplaning over a river
Rally style drive a mile
This car can make me smile
Demon drift on my way
Beamin' lights look like day
Though it night, I have sight
Of what's ahead
What I said
Now I'll rev
I feel fast, though I slow
The sound is what makes me go
Wipe the shield
Windows sealed
Crosswalk yield
Music blaring
Not caring
About the night
Just my ride

My brain
Membrane
Contains

Coltrane
Brisbane
Bi-planes

Mansplaining
Hydroplaning
*******

Guilt explaining
Speaking plainly:

Fruit
Truth
Pie
Lies

Life
Liberty
Pursuit of something

Jazz and ****
What it is

Enjoy the fizz

The world is an eternal dimension
of boundless equations and transcendence
each infinite bridge a gentle passageway
guiding society to a brighter destination
a labyrinth of lucid designs bursting a bolder depth
its inner existence expanding in various galaxies
an outer universe paralleling Saturn
seamless, hovering in a globe of nighttime glow
a blazed beat swaying into unreachable infinities
toward a divine dimension illuminating in sight
spewing with desire and shimmering nouns
a gaining array of pronouns creating its own creation
of sparking adjectives and metaphors
intensifying in internal rhyme
revolving in a hypnotic blast
breezing, heavenly depictions ascending in gravity
stretching in philosophy
it’s wide contents a unique symbol of crowned poetics
classic, concrete, a scintillating sheet of liquid lyrics
filling the imaginative landscape
rocking tracks spinning in raw and blended downbeats
grinding, unwinding in a wave of majestic music
flowing in truth and reality
an escape from diminishing defeats and sleeping death
a transition hydroplaning in timeless inventions
polishing its sleek scenery in immense lustrous letters
complete, tightly coordinated
traveling in a sea of towering greatness