sounding the fury

The wheels sputter awake, and then it’s down the streets, jittery but still alive, hard turns and unexpected bursts of speed. Courting disaster, wooing her until we don’t know who’s going to take who home, prowling like a shark, one-way streets if ever you can, cause pedestrians and stoplights are slow pangs of misery. I curb the desire to drive to the home of every person I know. The stereo can only sing too loud or not at all, so spin the knob and let it land where it may. The words on signs reflected in the mirror blur with almost every heartbeat, screaming that I’d know where I am if I would just care enough to read them, but I’m soaking up what barely passes for home now, fully present and gone all at once.

The deep rumble of engine and speakers may be emanating solely from my chest now, and I’m driving low, not slouching, just coiled, free hand filled with a fistful of either hair or clothing, riding every minute of time to its component parts, less killing time than dissecting it, struggling for the scalpel, no anaesthesia for anybody involved. The window’s rolled down just enough to taste the air, carrying the smell of either perfect velocity or approaching sirens, and maybe not the kind that you’d think.

Hills pocked with potholes and speed bumps, alleys, dead ends, and constructions zones and streets, streets filled with students and muggers and lovers and assailants and just kids, all kids, and they all have something to say. If you drive hard enough, you can hear each voice raised in the same song. Can’t tell what it is; stereo’s too loud. The city growls and protests under my gaze. I’ve never seen it so beautiful.

When I get out, the sudden silence barely sighs before hoarse bleats split it. It takes me a second before I realize it’s from birds and look up at the huge line of birds, auks, if they’re heralding their own arrival. The formation wavers and breaks, the point inverting, and that point breaking and inverting, holding there until they wheel, by turns north, west, north, west.

If they herald somebody else’s arrival, too bad for him. I’m angry and caged, and disaster’s got a fifth of gin in her and her skirt hiked up. Leave a note.