Tomorrow is an atom bomb and yesterday is a bicycle built for two. Now is temporary, never quite here, like I'm always just missing it as it staggers out of sight, always glimpsing it from the corner of my eye but when I look it's gone, nothing more than trails of smoke and old candy wrappers, a wino puking in an alley, only lifting his head up in just enough time to ask for a dime, just a dime. And maybe that's all it ever was. Air is stale and breathing it in causes cancer. Everything causes cancer now. Bombarded by cellular phones and power lines and toxic chemicals, it's no wonder I'm rotting from the inside, no wonder why my head is just another place to keep old and useless thoughts, like some kind of invalid's diary. We move through life like a car-wreck, rubber-necking to catch a glimpse of the carnage. Maybe we're lucky and there's a decapitation. More often than not, though, it's just a fender bender, some idiot who wasn't paying attention and ran a red light. Seeing the world through cardboard eyes, trying to comprehend a three-dimensional reality but we are flat, not even two-dimensional, just scratchings on a piece of paper, and it's an impossible victory, like playing Russian Roulette with a full chamber. There are miracles all around, salvation in the hum of a refrigerator, redemption in the arms of a good sofa, religion in a cereal box- a new testament waiting to be reborn in the cluttered living rooms and dens of suburban America. But like the present, it is hidden. The grass keeps growing, even as we cut it. One must wipe the blades after mowing or they will rust. They will rust! And always bag the clippings. Remember, the brown bags are for organics, the white and black for trash, the blue bins for newspapers, the yellow for bottles, the orange for old love letters, the red for aborted fetuses, the clear for leftover dreams discarded like useless hunks of meat even the dog wouldn't eat. And somewhere in there is life, which can't be recylced or thrown away, just bottled and put on a shelf, out of sight where the neighbors' kids won't find it. The past is a dream. The future doesn't exist. The present is tense. Present-tense. Right back to the beginning, to the elusive moment, the here and now which is already fleeting, running on all fours into the empty darkness of the past.