Motor Cycle

for Dave Dikitolia

At 200 miles per hour,
the corporate grind
becomes fluid, a snake skin
sloughed from the moment
and vaporized in the tail pipe.

Some might say you're
running from ghosts
or loneliness and shame.
But you don't want vanishing
points, as much as speed
of light to cross over
that line, forgive the ghosts
and come back
in one piece.

Some might even say you
want to die, but that's a
friend too well known--
mother of cancer--
brother crashed on a
highway of no return--
and father, father of death
itself, tearing out your guts
with a shotgun in his mouth.

At 200 miles per hour,
you know death
is not fate but a chance
to beat the odds, the time
when mistakes aren't
the end, but a day to work
and make it all right again.

At 200 miles per hour, the road
is a razor that'll cut you in half
with just an engine and inertia
pulling you into yourself, and
you feel free of gravity.

(c) copyright 2012 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.