Restless in bed, the stir of warmth blossoming in his heart,
the girl he loved has gone,
drifted from his house to the field of vacant stares.
Rainstorms brew in his mind, shifting from one end to the other,
the current forming into a large sheet of distance damp with disconnection.
He thinks of fire. As he rolls out of bed.
Grabbing a cigarette from his ashtray,
he lights up. Old habits stay kept in the roof of his mouth. Fresh air
permeates through his nostrils as he steps out onto the front porch.
He props his elbows on the balustrade,
brushes against the grainy wood
tarnished from the skywater.
The sun droops below the gray cluster of clouds
hanging over a horizon colored with blues, reds, and yellows.
While he smokes on his cigarette he remembers the girl. Her name is a
wrinkled photograph stored in a dusty shoe box.
She has green eyes and curly red hair.
Her body is shaped in an hourglass figure.
She's tall and gaunt, but her
legs are toned from running several miles on her treadmill
each morning before the dark slips away into the fog of light.
He grounds the cigarette out on the porch. He steps onto the driveway. There's a red
Honda CRV parked across from the two-car garage.
He hops in. The key turns.
Booming engine roars out loud.
The wheels churn backwards. He pulls out of the
cul-de-sac. And he drives, drives,
until he can remember the road map, the one
that she stole from him to follow her dreams, and hopes, the aspirations that he had
once shared with her. A thin, white film of mist
belays across the windshield.
And for a short second he wishes that he were dead.
Dead so that he could have the
perspective of an omniscient narrator to oversee everything, and everyone.
But where is his girl? She's not the one who got away,
she's the one who abandoned him, the
night after he ate the sweet nectar,
the fruit, little drops of dew splashing onto the back of his tongue.
The red Honda CR-V careens down the interstate, windows down, subwoofers pumping
with something similar to apprehension,
tense with overwrought poems.
The substance lacking from trying too hard,
for something that wants nothing to do with him.

I have the willpower of a torrential flood
I have a tongue like a bolt of lightning
The drive of an ardent wildfire
With the serenity and Zen of a lake’s mirroring surface,
When the sun is just shy enough to hide away from the world five minutes before dawn.
I have traversed the Atlas and soul-searched in temples and nightclubs alike
As I navigated skyscrapers and mountains of mass media with a wrought-iron compass
I meditated and prostrated and repeated my Ex Corde mantra,
“Om mani padme hum, our Father in heaven,
I pledge allegiance to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will set us free.”
These old words resound in the Information Age with feigned harmlessness,
Amplified with the subwoofers of today’s youth, screaming, “The only true victory is peace”,
Screaming, “Rise up, daughters and sons of Forever”,
Screaming, “Next stop, the Greater Good!”

Traffic lights that shone us down
on the road we took the other night
I wanted to tell you how you looking good in your black DC tee shirt and your dark grey Nike glasses

We had to go home as I sat right there next to you
You drove your car from the North to the South and it took hours
But I didn't mind

Plugged my iPod into your Pioneer audio player
We set the volume up, up, and up
'til it sounded like "Boom! Boom!" from the subwoofers on the back of your car
We laughed out loud, how we enjoyed the night

I love how we sang along to the songs we loved
How we sang along over "Do I Wanna Know?" by Arctic Monkeys
How we sang along over "Team" by Lorde
How you turned the volume louder and louder everytime "Talk *****" by Jason Derulo is playing on shuffle

I love how you hated "Wake Me Up" by Ed Sheeran
"It's not even a song. It's rather a poetry",you said
but I loved the song too much
cause it contained the untold words from me to you
so I kept playing it on repeat :
"You should never cut your hair cause I love the way you flick it off your shoulders"

Wanted to tell you how loveable you're
Wanted to tell you how I didn't mind to be there under the city lights around
Wanted to tell you how I loved to wear your light blue Levi's jacket all night
Wanted to tell you how I thank you for everything you've done
Wanted to tell you how I loved the heart-shaped crumble of papers in my wallet beside your note that I kept for myself

Tried to realize where all of your moves is going for
Tried to tell you how I love to be there with you
Tried to tell you that I wanted you

But the time's up
and we still didn't
We. Did. Not.

It's too early
for this
there's a kid
whose subwoofers
that keep shaking
the trunk of his '04
Honda Civic
providing a tribal
staccato
a background
trance
to keep me
motivated
as I use a
screwdriver
to pop the latch on my
door for the
third time
this week
because I accidentally
ripped the
door handle off
and
I realize that I
forgot
my coffee on the counter at
home
and I forgot to tell
my cats that I love
them
before I left
and this is
all being obscured
by the threat of
sleep in this parking
lot
because I can never
seem to get to bed
early enough