Driving the Bloodway

Watercolor smears bright on dark night canvas to show black the door. Stars fade, smog bands blend and rise with noise of a hundred thousand hungry industrial animals hitting tires down on the freeway.

I belt in, bend the key, torture my ride to life, blink the lights open and grind it into motion.

Go.

Little time passes.

Four windows down. Smoke in my mouth, music in my ears fist fighting the roar of wind tugging at my hair. Slam it into 5th, press the slender pedal down, make its throat open louder, press me harder, pass the smaller animals faster…

Go.

Orange barrels. Freeway gumdrops. I so very want to side-swipe them. Hear them thump, watch them tumble into traffic and bounce like toys.

…but anarchy is not my way. Not here anyways. I won’t be the harm of others. Not here. Not this way. Stretched not to far off the red-light dominoes begin so I let up and slow. Tap the brakes, listen to the sounds sigh away and let the music take over.

Stop.

Someday, before the sun completes its rise, the neverending construction releases and we un.clot. The acceleration repeats. The noise repeats and we break into sun and merge onto a new artery going west.

Here the wind is different. The patterns are different. Everything is different. It’s more aggressive. Smaller cars with three cylinders banging, grills smiling hard in the reflected glare rush into hazard like dumb bugs. They weave and dodge on tiny cutter tires between 18 wheeled giants. Plastic bikes scream like crack-driven fruit flies caught in a rutting fury slice between lanes just to jump the next exit.

I plow forward fighting desires to pull the second lever into 4-Hi and crumple the lot of ‘em.

I push hard, signal, swerve right, brake slightly and stomp forward – avoiding death by a fools hair then toss my 2nd smoke out the window, watching it bounce off an asses windshield.

In a second I’m out of the bloodstream. In a minute I’m under cover.

At 5 I’ll be covered in blood again…going north.