"Driving to School"

BY NATE STAINS

vapors and smog peel away in curtains;

the stage is black, spotlit with droplets

and i see as usual a cavalry charge of smoke-stacked horsemen

everything old over the moon.

i forge onward in my rattling steel cage

an opera house of adolescent rage

mother nature’s sweet withered drizzle dribbles on the scene

and the sweet waters blind me in her gentle dream.

cross the pillars to the polis and then right there

a gold scaled dragon cracks the heavens in two and then right there

the canopy of cannons begins a thousand year overture as if

all the waters of the ocean were released in a dirge.

i crawl through the channels in this atlantis till i see

silver fishes shining in the sunbeams above me

swimming beyond my window in a blissful dance

swimming beyond my window in the fishes’ trance.