Commute

Coming home, my sentence served, car roaring deep and crisp, synching pounding rhythm down into the center of my chest, we are a shark cutting through the black rain, slick shine of asphalt, running hot, running hard, a terrible fucking day, full of sharp places and deep shadows and little enough has happened to make it any better and things are as things are, and they are that there is life and pain and blood and broken small things I cannot fix and I have an electronic pile of the most evil music on earth blasting away through high-response speakers, limbering up to rattle my cables and joints and meat and bones, booming waves right down into the bottom tip of my spine, windshield wipers in high speed desperation slashing wet away as I curve and cut and crouch down close to the watery slick of the road, my center hunkered into it, the wheel under my hands my reach and touch, fingertips and palms and nails grasping solid and tight and bound to the pavement, glued down, charging pools of water wedging under my grasp, trying to lift me away as I power through them, roaring, concentrate, focus, slalom lines past frightened-timid traffic falling away behind me on both sides in miles on disappearing miles of sheeting mists of streaking, beading light and water and Zepplin is slow pounding that overamped bass line through "When the Levee Breaks," howling straight into Zombie's "Pussy Liquor" ("One, two three! Who should I kill? Every motherfucker coming up the hill. One two three! What should I do? Get fucked up and fuck up with you...") and I scream the music through near-bleeding hamburger-raw sandpaper, hit the exit and roar down the frontage road toward the stoplights and we're running over 90 in the 40 and I'm gonna fuck around and kill myself here and I don't give a shit, but I might hurt someone else and I protect them because I never been good at anything else, don't know how to do anything else, not one fucking useful thing, so brake brake brake brake heavy and hard, winding down on the razor's edge of tearing the slippery friction from under the tires, pulling so many Gs that I can't sort out how we're not sliding across the slick crosswalk into the intersection, and we stop dead with the front wheels in the white paint and not even rocking on the springs, idling calm like a day in the park, unconcerned with adrenaline and sweat, and the light's patiently green wondering at the stillness, and now I've still got a thousand words to write tonight and I'd rather be smashing the Smithereens and rocket-sledding a gaping razor slash tear through black rain, singing deafening tribal war songs, daring it all to cover me in dark.