I can walk outside my door with some vodka in a glass
and I can look across the sky and see the desert in the clouds
the moon is bright, ivory, completely round
surrounded by galaxies and tiny pinpoints

I watch the mountains rise out of the trees
of Pennsylvania; I feel the heat grow as the East becomes the West
grass sinks into the ground, becoming miniscule grains of sand
sifting, changing, transforming into solid packed Mojave

How many gulps can I swallow before I will actually be there
eighty degrees in the darkness, a hundred and six in the light
how many drinks will I have before East becomes West
and grass becomes dirt; how many drugs can I take

Before life becomes something different
I can be somewhere else, become something else
where tumbleweeds are grasped by cyclones, tossed, taken
thrown through the air against our faces by dirt and dust, fine and soft

I want to take you with me, but I'm betting that I can't
and in the strength of all that Vodka, I can be another woman
another beast beneath the sun, another human under the stars
to waste away, to wait, to wish for sweet relief in all this loneliness.

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