hard break

last night i dreamt she'd thrown me out
of the car as it was flying down the highway.

something had exploded the moon, and pieces
of it littered the sides of the road, shining, white

freckles of it scattered and glowing in the black
of the trees so that everything, the night above,

the forests on either side, and the reflective panels
in the asphalt -- all of it looked like a starry sky.

i picked myself off the pavement, shook off the
moondust and started running in the direction

that her car had continued. the corpses of roadkill
reanimated as i passed, and skeletal deer and

groundhogs with loosened flesh lumbered after me.
it didn't worry me until they started talking.

you're in the wrong lane. you shouldn't be running
in the middle of the highway. cut your hair.

a flattened squirrel asked why are you naked? and
i paused. it didn't matter. i couldn't afford to stop. i started

again, running very nude, the air's sweaty hands molesting.
i can never seem to walk in dreams, at least not with

any kind of dignity. the air was still ripe with the smell
of burning rubber and of her. i sneezed, and it leveled

all the trees in the forest, sent the dead animals flying,
and ripped the long, white lines off of the highway.

i watched them all float out of sight, swallowed by the space
between the stars ahead of me, beneath me, and around me.

for a moment i thought i saw those two hell-red eyes
of her tail lights smoldering in the distance, thought

i heard the low grumbling of her engine as it revved
and raced to see god, or disney world, or to find a man to

really, honestly, truly love her. i was preoccupied
with eyes and distances. i stopped running and sat down.

someone pinched the wicks off the stars, and all the pieces
of moon faded to coal. i heard her crying before i woke up.

 

marriage is

killing a spider
hanging inches in front
of your window
as your wife screams

kill that motherfucker.
that is the biggest
goddamn thing
i've ever seen.

and you'll plead
that it's just a spider
and that it won't come
inside to hurt her,

but she's already thrusting
one of your old shoes
into your hand, saying
squash it with this

and you'll take the shoe,
its sole worn thin,
its off-white turned green
from years of yard work,

and you'll walk outside,
stand between the rose bush
and the overgrown hedge
and look at the web.

the spider looks back at you,
knowing, small hands waving,
beckoning your firm hand forward,
hungry for its karmic retribution

where he will be reborn a lion,
and you an antelope
on an african plain
that you'd read about that morning.

with its legs twitching and writhing
against the window pane,
its smear of a body likely still
smiling as it dreams dreams of

days spent lounging under a hot sun,
your carcass set before it, the flies
buzzarding around the pools of your blood,
and the spiders building webs to catch the flies.

you walk back inside, holding the shoe
reverently, as if it were
the gun of a fallen war hero
that killed hundreds.

you lie down to bed with your wife.
the night is warm with the sound of
crickets and neighborhood dogs barking
and the distant roar of lions.