Death of a Bicycle

The midnight fight of pale headlights,
Like a raging cancer patient falling out of bed,
The backward burn of that secret red
That shows the frightened dust
Falling from these vague leaves
As the vacuous cat purrs with me inside—
I’m leaning out of its side window.
The small house where we picked him up,
Him and his bicycle, where we came to get it—
The house opens its eyelid and
Sees his mother waking up within.
The detained light is a danger to our whispers.
And me the seated beast’s last voluntary victim,
Her stomach plays horrible music
As I watch these floundering friends
Take him apart, the bicycle.
A sudden blow to his bisected head and
He is on the ground, his veins twitching still.
They are upon him all at once,
Dealing out the suffering blows
In the crawling crimson vapors
Of our secret sadism.
I turn away, I turn away as I hear
His gurgled cry for help.
A firefly perforates the night air
And I pretend to connect the segments;
A lone lamp stranded in the country field
Melts a pool of orange butter below—
But I still see them tearing him up.
They deal him their gasping frustrations,
Unnecessary now, and take him apart
Piece by piece.
He must fit in the back, you know,
And I am chosen to squeeze in there,
This mechanical corpse all unbolted
And disfigured.
So I stare straight ahead, and giggle quietly
As I imagine that vacant tire’s
Dead gaze, haunting my periphery.
These friends laugh loudly, and we drive.