Speakers crackle
a minor chord falls
moving columns of air
I shift,
from forth
to fifth.
The clutch jams down
the beat builds up. A drum roll
with a quarter note kick
reads: CAUTION UNEVEN
PAVEMENT. Sound shakes the city-image in the rearview mirror and
a familiar fear falls
into the pool of my stomach. the city is still there,
even when I leave it is still there
grown upward and outward.

An apparition
keeping up appearances.
I’m as transparent
as my
arguments.Died a thousand times
but only once did I ever try.
A model of the modern man,
a fortress of stoicism.With only one drink down.
I’ve got a heart so heavy
it bends the truth
a convex lens to reflect
the lightness of being.SoberLight bends and
breaks into prisms.
You can slow it down
enough to see.
The mass of light
can shift a scale between
abstention
andclear liquors
in thick walled glasses
through clouded heads
condensing noise
into troubled thoughts.
It’s the mass of light.
Its information,
gravity,
A universal constant.
It’s a certain thing.
That’s never really certain
it’s something entirely different.
Maintain
For hope and trust
a cage, thrust in.
to contain, not
correct.
A stage, make it known.
If the songs cease
we have gone too far
and lost our way.