I don't want to leave you to rear-views
my chest is 454
for hair in your eyes at 65
you crack smiles like
river beds in the summer
and somewhere in the desert
the stars are up
and pedals are down headed east
to get a rise from a sun dress north of knees
she sees what I'm driving at
all thumbs and no maps
anywhere but back the way we came from
we've traveled too far into this turn-for-the-worse
to lift from the wreckage and call for innocence
or a taxi
it's an accident waiting to happen, you and I blue as sky
and eventually we'll turn black
with our broken headlights, our mouths like ditches
to fall asleep in
nothing but another round-about with no way out
let's cut the ties like slashed tires
and let out violent breaths, to cascade
across an empty back road and lose control
of a reinvented wheel
until we're a new open wound ready to heal
our head(s) on collision
and cold shoulders filled with the parts
driven to never make destinations
we've been reduced to no-rest stop patrons
on hot vinyl in empty diners, hearts starved like last legs
running on the fumes of break shoes
motors killed left to play in the traffic
of scenic routes turned skid marks
trying to back track past having ever
tread on each other
wishing after every right turn there was something left;
a better life than one of scrap-parts and false starts,
an Oldsmobile laid to rest in a back-country
junkyard ‘cause there was no place
to drive home to
from gas stations to cheap motels,
cold words and rental cars
when we couldn’t follow directions with fog lights
shorter than foresight & called it quits at
crossroads of uncertainty and us
______
I don’t want to leave you in the dust
your hair like five am ruin
chest an aching engine’s purr
breaking down on the side of the road less traveled