On the two lane highway we change our minds... by Max West

and pull off at an intersection, sign reads "Don't Think" down to the liquor store, brand name lights flash Marlboros Doritos closely tailed by sizzling antacid chasers targeting those hypnotic white pills adrift in slow billowing clouds across the billboards- "What Bullshit" I see an impulse flash in the next aisle over so we weave the cybernetic hysteria of unending compulsive lane and channel changes, flashing past contrived TV scenes and the electromagnetic fear broadcast via satellite, the agonized telephones going completely AT+T wireless while still tethered to the world’s ulterior strings, and somewhere a long way down one thread I see the hate of hatred slyly tightening the noose of prejudice- and then a silent lane, no sign, no reason, no reason to go there as a matter of fact but for the obvious evidence that it's empty, slide down our mood's anvil and ride around melting forward like slick polished butter obsidian pooling under the infant reflections of unmasked stars, slide through the greased dark with twin headlight eyes floating down the blacktop river in solitary wavelength luminiscence, no shark signs to see but still things so we give them new names, begin to improvise constellations over the whole outmoded sky as a matter of fact, not stopping even at the horizon where we’re finding old Orion’s sword driving into wild antenna aresenals, conductive mothers nursing a whole universe through receptive grey dishes, cold fish in all the spermy words squirming about us, all of it food for some gigantic belly whale we are only one star inside of- still onwards we fly feeling each porous vein of the road, each pockmark rocking every subtle bounce, each wind detail each time we thought about not thinking then feeling again kissing motion itself with unseen lips but still real, lips speaking not only signs but signals that don't always flash but keep spilling over into the streets constantly like shattering, sparkling glass-

Author bio:

Max West is a creative writer, musician, and graduate of UC Davis, who has published articles, a book entitled Fourteen Months and Two Weeks Downtown: A Fictional Documentary with Names Changed to Protect the Guilty, poems and books of poetry, including Professions, Pocket Poems Vol. 1, and Semi-Serious Multi-Faceted Flowering Wheel Poem. He resides in Sacramento, California.