Cruising night on the boulevard. Young Aztecs and Africans in garbs of Eddie Bauer, J.Crew and The Gap cruise in chromed exteriors, and hollow interiors. With few heroines, and many lines of heroin, America's youth find themselves idolizing cars, from lowriders to the back seat of their jeeps.

   That night a young child chokes on the toxic fumes, an indigenous woman is buried six-feet deep, and a homegirl chromes her 13 inch rims til' perfection.

   Quetzalcoatl, the serpent eagle, continues on pace towards Tenochtitlan but is having a hard time catching a lift. The bus line pulls by, derailing the herd of buffalo, and Sitting Bull awaits crying for the next bus.

   The construction of highways has destroyed what was once sacred. The pillaging of villages, killing of the buffalo, murder and rape of the Indigenous people are all forgotten as the modern-day Olmecs, Incas, Aztecs and Africans travel to the nearest night spot.
   Ese, there's too much traffic!
   Time stood still, and people complained. Young men strolled, in a daze, pushing the pedal of their own destruction, for that possible glance of lust.

   Young women with stuffed bras, Revlon masks and plastic smiles seek that one mate, but first a drive-thru for a quick stomach-injection.

   What's taking them so long...are they killing the cow in the back! The line at McDonalds seemed out of sight.

   Both genders, engendered, never met. They were caught in traffic. Caught amidst false dreams, amidst trained tendencies of excitement, of fun, of a challenge. Trapped in a world of fastfood, fastcars, and fastlives...

   Many were running for their lives, but not even walking their own footsteps. Most just sat there, behind a steering wheel that moved them to another day...of staleness, of deepbreathing, of false isolation.

   Pa' donde vamos!? Are we headed to the spot? The spot where the bodies of our elders were dumped off. The spot where the buffalo lay. The spot where the collective toxic fumes gather for our own genocide. Nah, chale ese, we're headed for the boulevard.

   The place of our broken dreams and our self-made destruction. But first we must stop for gas. But how do we pay for it? The air was filled with the smell of men and women splashed with Eternity and Escape seeking to hide the stench of billions of corpses worldwide, much like one would spray potpourri air freshner to hide the smells of shit. All the passengers scrambled for change to fill up their ride with the spirit of 76, a.k.a., the gasoline won in Desert Storm. Usually, the most difficult task lies in removing the smell of gas from one's hands, and tonight, the stench, and the blood on our hands would be irremovable. The paper towels seemed to have run out, and we're standing there, next to pump number 2, dripping centuries of colonization.

   Our passenger, riding shotgun, asks, "Who'll pay me back for the gas money?" And the wind, intoxicated as it was, replied, Humanity. Humanity will pay. After a laugh, the back-seat passenger replies, "What? Que traes holmes, we'll just CHARGE it?"

Written by: Cesar A. Cruz