California, Gracefully

two sets of taillights burn dim and divide,

stretch for miles making track marks across what veins fail to carry.

you should have taken my keys while my hands were shaking.

you could have kept the dead gone, entombed in the soil of arms.

raise the breathing abrasion with a turn of the key.

lost motor skills and a set cruise control.

mangled insect screams through the puddles of drool.

mainline the highway baby,

tie off the concrete veins and set the radio to fm

love songs clocked relapse defined by the rpm's of a static heart,

reanimated by the rush of eyes and horizon.

nothing warms like a road flare when caution sets.

anodyne seeps like dashed yellow lines through the withdrawn rearview addict.

drenched to the drawn teeth in seething foam.

if you want me dead, you should have called me home.

rumble strip as pulse prevents retreating eyes, dilate and close.

i can feel the dry heaves moisten, i can feel the blood withdraw.

you are my failed twelve step program.

a red light could kick this habit, a needle full of the junkies fuel.

drops of blood on her fingertips.

your arms are a deprivation chamber.

sterile to sixty in forever flat.

dissolve into the coast like john wayne.

a hero and his heroine.