Cocaine

People disappear.
And go looking for a place to be looked at.
All the way down Wilshire and above us: like a sheet of indigo tile.
As we waited, our nicotine glowed in the distance like flies
to some heaven, some high road.
“Who sat on mountaintops in cars reading books aloud to the canyons?”
Like gods and at home being extras at best.
I almost believed love then someone new called me
and time’s been repeating. Time’s on like a show.
They say we’re all wanted for living, that somebody’s coming,
but even the darkest of frames make a face feel unsafe.
Yours was here, yours was seen
and it could have been two but you sold it for nothing.
Goodbye to all that then we’re back low,
trying to fit the right size for what passes as days.
Take a vitamin, angel. Drink water.
The earth is a big thing.
Would you still like to have it or take the check early tonight?
I get worried then go for a drive with my eyes closed
right here—on the thirty-third floor of my thirty-third year—
what a party it turned out to be.
No one wanted to leave.
When the car you steer best is not yours; or the body.
The house and the job. Rooms of white lines. Gold lobbies.
We cringe at these lists but without them, who’s counting?
I was flying over the country with you,
over states in their neat squares and fixed laws.
Flying over the country with women and men
in their trim suits and skirts.
Some nights I wait right out front for a moment
well after I get home. (Forced silence.)
I know what’s inside.
We know what comes next.