Fortune becomes depth
as black becomes sound.
Motor cities pan out
across clay deserts.
Sand becomes air.
Highways rise
through cosmic sound,
blistered staccato,
and scarred concerto.
Coltrane crosses mountains,
whistles through an eyelid,
and comes to rest
on my plate
in the morning
when bacon grease
ruffles the feathers
of my fizzed gin.

At three o’clock in the morning,
anything is possible-
even the drowning of a white rat
that dumps its morning constitutional
beneath the yellow-stained toilet.
Headlines are trivial,
but it all makes sense
in the classified ads.

Mike McLaren forages for words wherever he can find them, and records them by hand in journals of graph paper. He makes a living as a content writer, sketches graffiti cartoons, meditates, and plays Texas slide and country blues in the local breweries for free beer. He spends every moment of his spare time hiking and biking the Colorado Rockies with his wife of 43 years. His poems and narrative essays appear in journals all over the world, here and there, now and again—he doesn’t know how, and he never knows when.