From my window overlooking the freeway

We will go on many years like this, clutching our little psychologies in narrow lines clipping along like prosperous cattle

under the clock's prod.

Each morning the face

of a former beauty queen

sits at our tables

and tallies the night's toll

of mutilated and murdered

while we take note, forget

go on. The time has come

when the very rocks open and cry out

against us

and we do not have words

to speak.