50 Foot Wave

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Remember this? Heaven going in and out of focus as we climbed the stairs,climbing the walls. Nervous energy tangling up our insides, then untangling our thoughts when we plugged in and tried to let fly. Not to heaven yet…first we had to celebrate the sticky textures of this plane, looking for the burning and maybe some burning shame, I dunno. The first kind of burning converts fuel to heat to mechanical energy, and it sent our dumpy vehicle around the parking lot in the middle of the night, doing donuts. Then sour coffee and donuts with the drag queens under fluorescent lights. Inching toward heaven.

Back up the stairs to the attic practice space and now it’s like camping under the stars, one skylight showing us our mayfly doom compared to infinite darkness and far-flung fireballs, the other showed us pretty light pollution, gold and muffling. Coffee finished, we switch to plain water, anticipating the burning. The best we can be is pathetic…groping for the human condition, that’s our win. Burning shame. Sad, really. Then, pitying heaven climbs the walls, oozing up from the basement like noise, seeps in through the crummy carpet, joins the heat. Heaven is pure but still a little crummier than we’d heard. Which matches us better.

Of course, this was all a long time ago. Now road-hogging, tar-kissing, means heaven and hell and this plane have combined into interesting fumes in the burnt air and weird-ass chemicals in the blue dirt. Plus tendrils of the night before and muscles sore from tension and release. You got a weird salad for breakfast where the quinoa got mushy and maybe it’s not even quinoa, it just looked like it inside the plastic container but that’s ok cuz it’s not breakfast from the Coke machine and also? Right behind the Holiday Inn is a devastating empty lot full of wildflowers and honest wind and maybe some garbage, but that’s just because of that heaven/hell/this plane thing and we’re used to that. It’s pretty pretty, it’s plain water, and you’re thirsty for it.