We used to take the old Plymouth Satellite
on the back roads of the Fort Lewis Military Reservation.
The DuPont/Steilacoom road.
In the dark, the douglas fir stood so tall
their branches canopied the road
and blotted out the night sky
down to a thin ribbon of dim.
We used to follow that ribbon at 110 mph
with the headlights shut off
pummeling the suspension down the miles straight stretch.
I remember laughing at our teenage nihilism.
I remember the fascism of youth.
and onanist daydreams of middle class solipsism.
I remember disregard for concern as camp theatrics.
I remember boredom.
We used to lay in the shallow impressions
made by unmarked graves in the Western State Mental Hospital Cemetery.
When the moon was out
you could see the gutted frame of the old hospital
ghost faced white and wreathed in dead groves of walnut
the branches twisting into themselves in agony.
We used to lay in the graves and mock the ghosts.
"come into me, come into me."
What a show we could manifest
in the face of indefinite abstraction.
It couldn't last.
I remember the accident outside the 1986 World's Fair
in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Dodge Tradesman van careened around the street corner
filled with beery laughter and the oldies radio pounding
In The Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett.
Wicked Pickett.
They got it up on two wheels and then turned it over and over
until it came to a stop against a lampost.
Everything was quiet but the car radio.
"I'm gonna wait 'till the midnight hour
when my love comes tumbling down.."
The driver was covered in diamonds of windshield and blood.
His passenger was still,
an ear pressed firmly against his own chest.
I remember looking at his twisted neck
and feeling the ebb of puerile arrogance
and the arrival of superstition.
