THIS THICK SOUP

This is a note about the notes I've written
 concerning the notes you couldn't read
after I passed them on to you in the hallway
between classes or walking past your table
in the lunch room where they were piles of
wax paper, odd meat, bad breath by the current.

My favorite music was accordion metal
with according to guitarists fretting their futures
in commodities they can't scale, is the sort of jamming
that is performed in alleys behind banks while they're robbed
and getaway cars crash after they peel out from between
narrow streets to pile on traffic islands
after they note, still in their ski masks,
the song of the sirens who's only lyric
informs them that George Bailey or the plot
where they'll be buried
wait for them, patient as a vacuum.

Different ways of getting to the same point
is a math problem divided by two coughs and
multiplied with a stuttering attempt to retrace
the footsteps, tire tracks and litter trail
that bring us to the prime number
that makes or breaks how the day eventually turns out,
four cars going four different directions
at an intersection where the traffic lights are out and there are no police around to wave anyone
the right of passage.