Cells and Cells of Skulls

I couldn’t sleep, you probably get that way too,

so I went out, sleepy-eyed driving around, 

under the stars up and down the Turquoise Trail. 

Driving up on the prison south of Santa Fe, I slowed down. 

I thought of all the brains lying in there ... thinking. 

Lying in the dark, trying to dream, trying at least to sleep.

I felt bad for those brains in the dark, forever ditched 

in their neural grooves, so I pulled over 

but didn’t cut the ignition. Or turn off the headlights. 

I had it in my mind to go in and help them all,

all those brains rotating in circles in the dark. 

Someone told me once and maybe more than once 

that I’m a sweet man. 

I must not have cared when they told me that, 

hadn’t thought of it since, had shrugged it off, 

though I sweetly thanked them at the time, when they told me that. 

I flashed my high beams up over the front prison gate,

over the razor wire, up on those long hard walls suddenly 

reflecting the strawberry moon, clear of the silky clouds. 

They said I was sweet. Well, let’s find out, 

I thought, lowering my high beams 

but aiming them at the front gate, at the guards. 

So I’m sweet all over, from head to toe, and so 

my head is a big chocolate mousse, and if my head is 

a cake, I’ve got a file in it. Metaphoric, I mean. 

I drove toward the gate, the moon beamed bright, 

beamed all the way down into the waves in my gas tank 

and the gasoline got absolutely high tidal splashing 

causing the car to go faster and faster and faster, 

25 … 35 … 55 … 70 miles an hour, maybe even faster! 

The crossbar at the gate splintered, the guards dove 

sideways safely (cussing me fiercely) 

into the roadside ditches, while inside the prison, 

all those brand new, glow-in-the-dark brains

                                                       jumped out of theirs.