the car slid, and halted...
slid, and halted...
down and down the highway...
like a goldfish bowl in an
earthquake.

he scraped his fingernails
along the steering wheel:
an engineer's joke,
he thought.

we have no more control over where we're going
than we have over how fast we get there.

traffic ebbed, traffic flowed.

the floating excrement
of carbon fumes and
talk show radio waves
flooded his gills.

meanwhile, he grazed
the empty seat beside him,
as pristine as a newly planted
plastic castle.

It would be nice, he thought,
for a playful hand to poke at mine.
while I was shifting gears.

...to distract me.

when the day of singularity comes,
the universe will cease its cold march
into nothing and retreat
to the warm hearth of its center.

on that day, we will not fear
the disconnect.

for the lights of Los Angeles
will bead together like the dew
to become a bright beacon
of unity;

famine and poverty and war
will effervesce and be cast out
from our lungs;

and no broken line,
no twist of a synapse, no
cruel, infinite distance
of time or space
will ever again
separate

me and you.

Life is a storm,
and I am not your life raft;

treat me like the land.

strange window,
that it should reveal
nothing beyond,
and even less within.

Until the fog clears,
I'll hang a lantern
from my tired arm,

hold it out against
the cold sting
of the waves,

and pray to God
I can steer beyond
the rocks,

until I find you.

los angeles, he thinks.

she hasn't cared about
my stupid dream since
the gold rush.

don't forget
to compliment
her make-up.

© 2008 by Stephen Bobbett. All rights reserved.

tonight we sacrifice
our sacred eyes
upon the altar of
photons,
bathe our patron saints
in the kisses of
our flashbulbs,
and behold
the golden bodies
of our vicarious
adoration—
gods and goddesses
we believe we
could never
be.

© 2008 by Stephen Bobbett. All rights reserved.

blessed are they
who are nostalgic
for nothing,
whose memories are not
like spider webs
tethered to so many branches,
but are instead single threads
tied swiftly from heart
to home.

blessed they must be,
to be so much less entangled
than me.

© 2007 by Stephen Bobbett. All rights reserved.

you can't
incarcerate
the heart.
it will reach
for the keys
as the warden
sleeps,
and release
itself.

© 2008 by Stephen Bobbett. All rights reserved.