policy of the empire (modern distances in metric)

we never met the taste
of each other's lips
head on; but we had ideas
and a passion for
boxer shorts
that would have made our parents
blush


and it's a fourteen hour drive
to the sunset state, and we both know
it has always been fourteen hours,
but fourteen, sixteen, eighteen
twenty -


wasted minutes, wasted years,
while the saffron city lights
of a million stranded souls
watch the walls we tore down
grow weeds