Stars

oh beautiful sky with your stars
the stars you don’t see anymore because of the dim radio lights on your dashboard
and the many millions more dashboards as you drive intoxicated (barely) home from fiesta cantina
those stars you now see because you’re flying way above those lights
and you forgot what they were like or that all a star wishes to do is
inspire awe

and to make you wonder like you did that one summer at camp when your counselor told you that sometimes when someone dies their soul goes into a star and it shines brighter for you
and only you.
you look up and see the stars
and look down and see the city’s rendition of stars
except they’re yellow and red and more like a spectrum of dirty colors
because from up here that’s all it looks like.
up here it makes you think of down there because of claustrophobia
and an older woman sleeping next to you and you are too self conscious to wake her up because you have to piss.

so you hold and your stomach bubbles but not because of that but because you’re thinking about stars
and the down below where you’re going to be in an hour.
the time spent thinking of your arms and bodies locked together,
biting each other playfully because that’s what you do
and the softness of her back against your index finger at exactly 11 o clock

and now the stuffiness of this plane and the confinement of not being naked in a bed next to you
watching movies and talking about being naked and boobs and butts or your third nipple.
then your thoughts go back up to stars and it makes you think about how you can’t see them normally
and you wonder what it’s like to live in a place where you can.

those places probably exist probably but where.
where and in what town and what are the bars like there
and do they know how to make an AMF or is that just an LA thing
those towns must be a lot of fun but a more familiar kind of fun like your best friend who tells you all his secrets kind of fun
like how he didn’t have sex because the mattress wasn’t comfortable
and all you could think about while he told that story is the three stars

to your left and how one of them shines more brightly.
your mind wanders to those thoughts sparked by that star
and you haven’t thought about them in awhile even though memorial day was his anniversary
and its been 13 years since you last saw him and that must be him up in that star.

or not or its just the atmosphere playing tricks because that’s what it does sometimes
like when the sky turns orange and red and some hipster painter somewhere is happy and starts to paint it blue because that’s his impression of orange.
that sky sits comfortably over a beach with an ocean.
whose waves glow neon and you thought it was the atmosphere
but turned out to be just a bacterial reaction that happens once everyso often
and you wonder if you’ll see that again or a star in LA or what will come first
and there’s a certain music that plays at night when you go to the beach
and all you hear is the sound of waves crashing on the shore
and they each sound different some sad and some more animated because the moon is an inconsistent conductor.
not related to the stars you now see slowly fade in the distance because
you’re getting close to home.
the spotted clumps of light give way to a sea of yellow and you know the pilot will tell the stewardess to prepare for landing any minute
and the woman next to you will wake up and ask you if we’re almost there and if she was snoring to which you smile politely and say, “no.”

You’re almost there and you know because you can’t sleep on planes
and you can’t because the stars take your mind to too many different
places.