Interstate 40, Poem (Cycles I-V for Joe M.)

Interstate 40, Cycles I-V. (for Joe M.)

I.
Flying over Atlanta neighborhoods
segregated by winter woods.

A bare-tree parapet,
pipeline for
rusted cars and thieves.

Ancient muddy bottom moat
for guard dogs
with tennis balls and fleas.

venereal shotgun holler,
pulpit for displaced Elvis
and recycled voodoo gods.

Strolling nineteen fifties postcard USA,
a mint Ford under a blue tarp, riven and put
away like a bad memory,

fathers and sons
and brothers ejected from this world
like broken guitar strings.

II.
Asleep on headrests
slick with pomade
Little Richard’s bodyguards
wait to be called
forward
into the nose of first class
where the boss
sits like Mt. Rushmore.

Abolish, you say? But
Pyramids and columns always push
down before they fall.

Patience, like the plains, for the long awaited
snows that blanket the earth, a trickle like
the Red River moves a canyon wall,
Comanche protectorate no more.

We drive over the dust of
a thousand dead ponies
in a car built by new slaves
of paper governments,

stopping to watch the progress
of a beaver in a swollen pond,

ourselves up to mud and no good.

There’s nothing nameless here,
or rusted with answers
just old hillbilly porch music
and blues.

III.
Tobacco leaf skeletons hanging on bowed
tree-poles in the barns off Thunder Road,
old thirty-three.
Constellations in the Tennessee hay scent,
hand-split rafters and posts sway against loose siding,
memories of a man’s worthwhile hands
in the hatchet seams of sunlight -

the unused tack, the leaning stable,
the pig farm, the stories still being
told long after biscuits and gravy.
Cast-iron woodstove carried on his back
through the coal forest to his new bride,
generations hiding out in these mountains
and coming back to them,
its moonlight and thunder in their hearts and bones -
hands now that grip the wheel and drive into the sun.

IV.
Playing hangman from coast to coast
under Gideon nightstands,
Lost in the landscape of hide and seek,
waking up in a new world.
The nameless poison
of our gray merchant rivers buried
deep inside our Yucca mountains
and Alamos deserts.

Follow the white roadside cross
clinging to these brontosaurus hills -
a ribbon of scar upon the land

Follow the white cross into riverside Memphis,
the mud island Mississippi churns down through
delta lands of cotton and rice and Jefferson Davis.

Follow the white cross into gentle Ozark towns
with storm cellars and silos.

Follow the white cross into Bob and Wanda’s Catfish
and sit beneath a wall of men and women
who have served our greed with their lives.

Follow the burning candle in memoriam
and light another.

I-40,
put away like a bad tooth until Oklahoma and
old rust wrecks from the famous drought,
put away with the locusts who ate cars and horses,
and later sold hamburgers,
put away with the wind that pulls up farms like tent stakes,
put away in vans packed with fertilizers
and angry at Veteran’s Administrations and other demons.

Follow the white cross to the business of building empires
and monuments of death in 21st century America
and mark the date in your calendar mind.

I-40,
built over the gravel of sixty six,
the rubble of service stations with free air
and water and clean restrooms,
over the saddle and yoke of cowboy bars,
reptile farms, feed stores and greasy spoon diners,
over the put-aside plains of tepee gift shops now
firecrackers and casinos.

I-40,
Subway to Walmart,
over the land and over
the towns,
tire-slap monotony to meccas
of convenience
and same.

I-40 repetitions repeating dollars and cents
to the delight of Wall Street without the kicks

I-40 hauler of America’s freight, trade route
to China, painted river of concrete and neon,
levee of shattered fun house mirrors,
littered with the clown face of mediocrity we have
built and accepted into our hearts.

So let us leave the farm and follow the cross to the city,
walk up the river bed away from arid soils,
fill our wagon with rocks from the dead sea and roll
across these graveyard plains.

Watch the eagle
demonstrating his fence post,
notice the coyote
has walked east
to meet the wolf -
Learn the black bear’s
city ways
at the edge
of your garbage heap.

Recognize this land and your face in it,
feel the ruts in the road and the ancient marsh below,
and be kind to your native brother who
wears the white badge and worries for the
souls of his children too.

And so let us leave the farm and follow the cross
through Salisaw and Vian and Gore,
past Warner and Dewar and Henryetta,
over Jacktown, Meeker and Prague.

Let us spend the night in OK, Clinton crossing
deserted neon streets for dollar Pabst
and Haggard on the jukebox.

Let us stand under the black light
of this one bar town
our status as good-ole boys reviewed by
the local jurisdiction.

A lot of work in old mudslide California, we tell
them, and they all know a man’s
gotta do something
else ‘sides drink.

We arrive in the motherless night
for our sustenance and bartender Betty puts
the beer down in puddle rings,
next to pictures of her infantry son,
and the loud mouth, with no teeth,
who feeds scotch and beer to his pet pig.

We shoot pool with the Pueblo girl,
who smokes her birthday candy in the bathroom,
and even if it is the best table in the house,
let her run it, and let us leave at closing with our
backs to the wall,
clutching the wrong end of
our pool sticks.

Another strange room night
on stale sheets-
You can’t just crack your knuckles and wake up
in the morning refreshed.
You need more than a dip of snuff, and no matter
how many times you spit, the children will eat
lead paint every time the truck explodes.

V.
I-40,
corridor of coal, escape route from the drought,
grazing land and rib-eye steaks for breakfast
in the aisles of plenty.

I-40 internments, by-passing reservations,
mom and pop’s selling marijuana
instead of milkshakes.

I-40 funnel all the way, leaned over tepee
of carbon monoxide to the sea.

I-40 bong chamber, run dope and
interdiction breath mints like venom.

I-40 land grab movies for corn, whiskey
for mountains lined with gold.

I-40 hotel bed in Santa Rosa with tequila
and morning lava under the door.

I-40 conveyor land of belt buckles
and weigh stations
clinging to truck stop America.

Artery of OPEC,
human rights in China,
Albuquerque, Saudi Arabia.

I-40 Carry my zeppelin head across the Rio Grande,
along the rise of juniper and red stone flats.
Burn cedar in Zuni ovens and adobe garages
where dirty children sell fry bread and beef jerky.

I-40 paint the desert passage with your
woes, all the time coming and going, and never
anywhere but burger stand of mind,
the big top of creation slung out on mesas
leveling the sky.

I-40 Divide this country in a foot race
over the lost cities and towns,
and mourn the lives of your fathers and sons
on yellow ribbons tied to the bumpers
and gas tanks of your cars,
God-blessed
broken and hard pressed,
on the tires
and the armor of necessity,
in America,
in America, I-40.