I’m driving.

It’s night.

These are good roads.

These are back roads twisted and windy—curvy roads, hug the curve and I get butterflies in the stomach like a nervous high schooler in the back seat—twisted roads, no straight lines, no grids, no mundane workman’s web, no banality—bogs and wetland and river bridge and repeat. Good night drive roads—more hobgoblins per capita here—I can think on these roads, head haunted by caffein, understand Ray Bradbury love affairs with October.

These are good, twisted roads.

They’re some cthonic monster’s spine.

And I’m a jolly shiver.

Lots of skeleton trees on these roads—skeleton branches—post-October claws—giant, scarecrow hands reaching greedily for handfuls of stars or the moon, some kind of game that the scarecrow gods play but I don’t understand, cosmic jacks in the void. Spoils? I don’t know. But I once heard tell that the moon starts the month empty and dark—then fills with luminous souls, and when full, releases the ghosts whither they go.

I accelerate.

Scarecrow gods snatch more franticly.

Mayhaps their game comes to a close.

And sometimes I wonder: are there any ghosts that resist the moon?—space vacuum muting their necro-howls, as they claw the earth, gripping so tenaciously they tug the tides. And sometimes I wonder: where do moon-dumped souls go?—maybe the winnings of some lucky scarecrow.

I accelerate.

I hug a curve.

Did I mention that I love curves?

The full moon and the skeleton hands are in my driver’s window. The perfect song plays on my speakers—I accelerate to the perfect speed—I hug the curve at the perfect angle. I bob my head, it’d look strange to a passerby, but I bob my head, crane my neck, undulate my viewpoint—partly to the music, but mostly to make the moon, through my eyes, dance in the perfect manner: bouncing through branches, alluding bone hands.

I accelerate . . . maybe a little too much.

But speed limits and “no smoking” signs support the common fallacy.

Habits loose all their poetry if they can’t kill you.

I put it all together, my multi media artwork—the song, the speed, the curve, the moon motion on scarecrow orgy backdrop . . . and I hit it, a perfect moment. Just a split second. The moon oozes through the smudged glass, bleeding ghost plasma on my dirty window.

Perfect.

A truck passes, high-beam-bubble-bursting.

Snap back.

I realize this is silly. I realize that this little work is too etherial, as etherial as they come—just this one moment, for an audience of me, and no way to record it not way to crystalize it and share it with another pair of eyes. Hell, if someone was sitting in my passenger seat I still couldn’t have shared it, would have to stuff them in my skull windows. But then, another fast curve seduces me and with a hiccup and a cackle I realize and I know that etherial is important. This is important.

That I do this.

That I don’t stop.

That I never stop.