The Road

The road buckles
like an outstretched arm
at the point of pain,
hauling the horizon closer.
Your path is written
on the bulging surface,
a ripe, golden vein.
Above, in the aurora,
the constellations tighten.
You slow your pace,
drinking in the air.
Something bubbles upwards
from your heart,
the leaves of your brain
and your strands of hair
shiver up and start,
your hands clench,
your eyes whiten.

The light drains out
of everything around
and pours silently
between your white knuckles.
From your fists
it drips onto the ground
making silver puddles.
The landscape falls gently
away from your eyes,
but the road still twists
from the edge of reach
into the back of your mind.
It tells you things,
terrifying things
that glisten even in the dark,
in a voice so beautiful
that you laugh as you go blind.

The Drunks

Winos crowd the city bars,
usually the cheaper places.
Their mouths unclench, storm drains
ready to glug and gag
a deluge into their faces.
They carry leaking minds in cups
balanced on sagged shoulders.
At the slightest slosh
ache drips from the brim
and trails their blinking dishes
leaving them black as oil.

Later they'll have to piss,
shuffle past the bathroom mirror,
peering at themselves, hands
lightly moving over and over
the most eroded places
where their hides are slack,
blood vessels blooming like roses,
where the bottle once bit
a hair line crack
and sent them with a stroke
into a pile of bleeding noses.