road trip

jalopy dreams · Road Trip

 

we can travel together

                kick back in the lap of a classic chevy ragtop

                engine block roaring bold existence

                soaring down huckleberry highways

                the eyes of god spinning

                and every loose strand of your ponytail

                painting the desert blonde

 

we’ll hunt down all the blind spots

                eyes too wide to have corners, we’ll make up names

                for the stuff maps leave behind, trash-heap landmarks

                lost truckstop civilizations, the grand madness of utah

 

we’ll decorate the dashboard like noah’s ark

                with your collection of plastic pez dispensers

                mickey mouse and donald duck and whatever

                that frog-looking thing is suppose to be

                i’ll laugh at your cheap toys, you’ll make fun of my ugly hat

 

we can bum rush a million sideroads

                or linger too long in time traveling roadside restaurants

                jukebox juiced, shuffling dozens of yesterdays

                eat hotdogs and watermelon in a winnemucca parking lot

                pour bottled water over a broken radiator

                in arizona heat waves

 

you can make a map

                of cloud formations, i’ll navigate the radio

                we can kill the static with philosophical gibberish

                or sing along with hillbilly fiddles

                scratching out lazy love songs

 

we’ll take shelter

                in each other, and motel showers too small for two

                take epic naps and ruin most of our clothes

                in a piece of crap laundromat

 

we can witness the heartbeats of alien cities

                i’ll admit I’m lost, and you can lead me

                thru santa fe streets, explore the festival of summer

                mingle in the heat of human nature, make totem poles

                out of strangers, drink the local wine and tell true-ish tales

                of exodus and diaspora

 

we’ll pose like stay dogs

                in tourist trap photographs, you all ragdoll beautiful

        me in my ugly hat

 

we’ll merge in and out of uhaul caravans

                in grapes of wrath formation

                across the four dimensions of america

                black and white and asphalt gray

                and you can crash in the backseat, paint your toenails

                whatever color you want

 

we can vanish into blue mountains

                the way all good expeditions do

                a gospel of impulse

                nothing but myth

                and a trail of sunflower seeds    

 

 

2009

posted for the world premier of the spectacular "friday writings" at poets and storytellers united