Prize

As the city of angels questions its name
And a demand for the right to breathe
Meets retaliation
A cop scarcely evades my driver’s side.
Did Jon get a siren that night?
Once they realized?

I want to know a lot of
Twisted shit that I will never ask his mother
Like was his head on the steering wheel
Or on his right shoulder, more toward
The empty but always full
Place where it is expected
That one would install
A passenger seat
Was his mouth agape
Were his blue eyes closed?
Had he bitten
Straight through his tongue,
Or just punctured it, and how much was he bleeding?
Was he still seizing when the parking lot attendant
Discovered him?
Was he still in his body then? Did the stranger guarding the place walk up to the Jeep with the hard top, the color of Pacific shores, the last car in the lot before he could lock up and go home, on the phone with dispatch at Westside Towing Co., and did his buddy over there remind him how to

Call 911

When he forgot everything

when he looked in that window?

And did Jon leave here forever with his seatbelt securely fastened
Or did the door handle trigger a series of the worst dominoes the parking lot attendant had never agreed to play?
Put them back, put them back
Did he then
If Jon asphyxiated himself with his seatbelt unbuckled
And so tumbled out, surprise human pounds so very recently moving, into a stranger’s arms that night
Did the stranger with a home try
To shove his lifeless body back in?

When No occurs, we do prize
Simpler befores.

And did this man on the clock care about this human being
Who was just this evening alive
And quieting his descending mind
With chemical inhales, secrets
And terrorizing those he still trusted
To love him?
Did the parking lot attendant drive home and tell his wife
And did he say his name and did she cry?

À haute voix:

How close that night
How much still fused between twilight body and morning soul
How much of him on earth below?

Sometimes heaven seems like nonsense.
Of course this is it. Right?
Maybe.
Otherwise what?

Life recoils from these queries.
Maybe to save the living
From things they should not know