Meditations Down a Shot-gun barrel

Things that stand between me and a roadkill grave:
the feverish art of dodging,
those out of the way points where my world intersects with the "real"
one,
my colossal, haunting left eye,
a loving and savvily finaggling mom,
the scars that armor my memory,
a vampirish connoisseurship of life,
a reliable white Taurus with a leopard steering wheel cover,
an illustrated history of China, especially the sections about their
literati,
a respectable talent for lying,
and an inkling of the fierce balance of the cosmos.