‘Cago

After my shift of night driving on the highway, after my shift of ducking and dodging the hypnotics of the night, after coming to terms with the carnage that is half the earths' insect population painted on the windshield of my car with such viscosity that I'd be better off just shutting my eyes, after I refuse to be lulled to sleep by the ebb and flow of light and shadow, after I contemplate that it's not I moving toward the city but maybe it's the city moving towards me? Maybe the road is my treadmill, and the gas pedal is my start button? After I survive the hyper speed chase of concrete and barrels, I pull in under the comfort of fluorescent lamps and gaseous fumes, tag in a suitable replacement, strip to my Hanes, and settle down for a short early morning death on the comfort of a warm leather bench.

I wake up having molded to my seat and I rip myself off like a child hastily unraveling their fruit by the foot. Those two hours of mindless meditation seemed to mean something; after all, my heart is still beating. I set out amongst the concrete gymnasium filled with consumeristic trap cards, looking for a place to shit and a place to sit; I found both.

I set up camp in this god forsaken corner store of a coffee shop, playing pingpong between this poem and a screenplay. I can't help but feel shamefully connected to every other sad sack wannabe writer who has ever stopped mid sentence to look out the window, lose their train of thought, stop and stare as an Ichabod Crane imposter walks to his own awkward beat, gets passed by an armless three-wheeled seat cycler, and is nearly missed by a junkyard truck carrying a rubber band ball of scrap metal which is strapped to the roof with nothing more than gravity and a few bungee cords.

There's a chilling sense of anonymity in numbers with places like this. I lock eyes with people who seem to be in their own world, like this city is theirs, like everyone is there to service or hinder them, like they could take a shit on the sidewalk and wipe with the passing blanket of a baby-mother jogger combo and get away with it on account of the fact that the baby-mother jogger is also alone and by logic wouldn’t notice a thing.

A false horizon simulates drowning. If drowning is my fate, I prefer a larger sky to do it under. Give me a landscape or at least a chance to manscape. I'm anxious and full of agendas; I am more like this city than I wish to admit.