Bardo or Heaven?

Sometimes I think I died half a decade ago

And the rest of my life is some kind of bardo or heaven

The smoke that rises from the fires in the west

As it settles higher, is it some kind of test from oblivion?

If I would get the answers wrong

Would this all still be mercifully long

Or nothing, or nothing?

Or is this all real in the physical sense, not just synapses reeling

Off an endless past tense in the morning?

Like a moment flashing in the black of my eye

When I catch it staring into the mirror longer than it’s supposed to

And I stare back into it?

The smoke reaching over from a week ago

Like a postcard sent by a devil passing through in Modesto

It’s something that we see but barely understand

All the shipping lanes from Route 99, and up through the heartland

And what a misnomer that has always been, just a series of arteries

Hardening into a bypass

Mass migration of a conscious dream

The way things are finally becoming the way that they seem

The way that things are

The sunlight here’s different than it used to be

It’s taken on a shade that you rarely see before sunset

Layers of violet, and amber too

Signifying tertiary violence that I feel no kin to

But everyone is culpable now

That’s the way the con pans out

Or nothing, or nothing

Or is this all real in the physical sense, not just synapses reeling

Off an endless past tense in the morning?

Like a moment flashing in the black of my eye

When I catch it staring into the mirror longer than it’s supposed to

And I stare back into it?