Mandela Effect

Three poets are riding in a clown car
We speak in alternating tones
Our voices swimming
In the amniotic flow
Of the moonlit highway

Topics range from punk to poetry
To astrology to the Mandela Effect:

A collective mis-remembering of details that conjures up alternate memories
In certain spaces between worlds you can glimpse the birth of these adjacent truths

The highway at 3AM is one of these
Interstitial gaps in reality

Behind us a siren calls
And our world flashes
Into a kaleidoscope
Of sapphire light

In one world this is a cop car
In another world this is an earthbound constellation
Of shooting stars come to perch atop our gravity
A being clad in monochrome steps out of the car

In one world he is a police officer
In another world he is an extrajudicial bounty hunter
He asks one poet if he knows why he is being pulled over

I can almost see the words "respect" and "nonthreatening" and "compliance" flash
Across his pale face as he answers
The other poets sit still like lumps of coal
Buried deep in the earth

We are blending into the night
We have done this many times before
Holding our breaths to slow the pulse
Of our black hearts

He cannot see us...or he chooses not to...

I can glimpse another world opening
As the officer walks back to his car
To process the "license and registration"

In this world I am in the driver's seat
In this world I am pulled out of the car
And pressed into the asphalt like I belong there
The words "resist" and "noncompliance" and "oxgyen" flash
Across my darkened face

I am brought back to the world that is

The officer comes back to the driver's seat
That I am not in and tells my friend -- the poet
To be more careful

He walks away
Me ant the other poet release our breaths
In gasps of air

We have melted back into the world that is

In this world we return to the amniotic flow of the moonlight highway
In another world our blood flows like my grandma's tears
My breath is gone
I cannot breathe