Face against the cool car window glass
past all our small gathering of signs and wonders
breaking the dark
Neon is an inert gas
held in fine glass tubes
twisted and sweet blood hot colored glow
It was important to know
or to be told the difference
The neon bent in words
or the incandescent bulbs
with whispered rose gold filament inside,
that pulse
on
and off
one
then another
then another
If the tumbling light spelled
distant stilletto whiskey glamor
it was, it was key
in the back seat,
sometimes already pajama time,
milk warm and dazed,
it was key, it was apparently
crucial to give these ghosts
names and science and
one cool blue curve the way the lights
slide out long and liquid with the motion of the car
the fiat or the mini
crucial to define that
how in daylight you could see the metal
behind the tubes and the glass worked just that way
or how
incandescent could be each bulb dull and dusty and
nothing, not a spark or a flicker
of a parade, not a cascade of bright
this one this one this one next
as if, if I wasn't told,
I and the lights could fly off,
sparks rising in the air
but come dark
electric ghosts and fire trails
signals, signs that are signs
signs that point out to something
more impossibly glorious than
incandesce and transcend
glass transubstantiates
if I could put it under my tongue
press down
it would not be broken shards
cutting, no, it would melt like sugar
soft in the sublingual heat
beneath the tongue beneath the text
and the reasons
there would be another place
with more
every corner
every cardinal point
if I spun with my arms wide
it would blow me out
hollow inside with sudden grace
to light up that red pink orange
and the way it would splash
soak into my skin on off on
red pink nothing red pink
always and always