Bearing Down the Interstate

The concaving space up in my rattletrap caboose of a head is filled with methamphetamine, and so I’m trying to extrapolate and explain my way out of it. This guy — the burly, hatchet-faced dude I’ve been rabidly motor-mouthing in the seat next to me — is asleep. I’ve literally talked him to sleep. Not even sure when he stopped listening, or if he ever was. So, well, now, at least, I’ve got time to myself on this here all-nighter Greyhound bus. Pretty much the whole bunch of these road-weary sons-of-bitches is bleary-eyed, dusted, or conked out. Preternaturally speaking, I’m the only one here within reasonable expectations of wakefulness. Oh, and, well, the driver — I’d hope at least. White-knuckling it through the wee hours, I’d venture. Maybe in a similar shape to mine. With all the fixings and trappings, as they say, of a small-time operator who’s lost a few teeth and more than a few brain cells along the way. And so we ride, up and at ’em, pushing 70 probably at this time of night, with the highway basically abandoned except for a few stray godawful night owls who make it their business to hoot prayers for prey in the off hours: them times when the wind’s howl is a subterranean wisp of its own…and yours…and mine…my volition’s shot. As you can’t be sure of your of even your own facial features staying put around here. Around now. This pinched and gluttonous time in my life that I am so unkemptly parading my way through. This stuff pulsing through me. I can feel my every follicle twitch as this jalopy of a bus reconnoiters the potholes. Olympic white gimmicks conjoined up in the jangle of my brain’s fuzz are telling me to never stay put, to branch out, to subdivision this current version of myself that I’ve got on loan to others for the thwacked cheek of being personable. And we’re under the stars. So many…what do they say? Innumerable? A clusterfuck of ’em, anyway. But they’ve all got names. Some named after retired professional golfers and astrophysics grad students, maybe. Greek Gods. Jungian archetypes. Cartoon dogs. From their dust we all arose. Or so I’ve heard it. The galaxies colliding up there. Stellar nurseries. Weird and wonderful baby stars blowing holes into nebulas. Some real globular Herbig-Haro shit going on up there somewhere. And we’re all down here just sucking up diesel exhaust, waiting for our destination to arrive. We are the heart’s sleeve-tuckers, riding out these here…