Sometimes I think I died half a decade ago And the rest of my life is some kind of bardo or heaven The smoke that rises from the fires in the west As it settles higher, is it some kind of test from oblivion? If I would get the answers wrong Would this all still be mercifully long Or nothing, or nothing? Or is this all real in the physical sense, not just synapses reeling Off an endless past tense in the morning? Like a moment flashing in the black of my eye When I catch it staring into the mirror longer than it’s supposed to And I stare back into it? The smoke reaching over from a week ago Like a postcard sent by a devil passing through in Modesto It’s something that we see but barely understand All the shipping lanes from Route 99, and up through the heartland And what a misnomer that has always been, just a series of arteries Hardening into a bypass Mass migration of a conscious dream The way things are finally becoming the way that they seem The way that things are The sunlight here’s different than it used to be It’s taken on a shade that you rarely see before sunset Layers of violet, and amber too Signifying tertiary violence that I feel no kin to But everyone is culpable now That’s the way the con pans out Or nothing, or nothing Or is this all real in the physical sense, not just synapses reeling Off an endless past tense in the morning? Like a moment flashing in the black of my eye When I catch it staring into the mirror longer than it’s supposed to And I stare back into it?