Electric cars are coming
Driverless ones too
I wonder if you feel
as disappointed as I do
If you remember the thrill of the road
with the top down on your car
Wind whipping your hair wildly
Speedometer's needle your guiding star
Accelerating on the freeway
Punching out at green lights
Burning rubber at those stop signs
Crossing the country, seeing sights...
Never again to 'see the USA
in our Chevrolets,' we are
surrounded by sensors, alarms and air bags
belted in seat harnesses and gagged
When my muse is busy dodging fire and brick
how can it scribe beautiful things.
With pepper spray in the eyes
batons and viruses whirling overhead
balls of anger and hate wanting to lay me into R.I.P.
How can it see pink horizons glazed with songbirds
or morning suns sprinkling silver sprigs over lily ponds.
For now, my muse is smashing baseball- apple pie and Chevrolets
smothering smiles-putting on yet another game face.
Bolting riot gear into heavy metal bones-chewing cans of mace,
etching cracked skulls and caskets onto burning pages
for now-this is the way my muse is gonna roll
until Uncle Riot and Auntie virus head for home-
Dead cars decorate the field
behind an old Texaco station
that smells of grease and gasoline
This is their graveyard:
a place to rest and rust
as relics of yesteryear
Fords, Plymouths, Chevrolets,
mirrored monuments of the past
sleep peacefully in the grass
Shards of glass spatter floor mats
like pieces of puzzles
no one cares to put together
Ripped seats, pitted chrome
rotten rubber, faded paint
telltale signs of a lost battle
The playground for adventurous boys
they pretend to steer these beauties
along one last mile of highway
Treasure hunters scavenge
name tags, license plates, hood ornaments
the last source of identity
After all, in the end
name and reputation
are all that's left on this earth
Heaven holds the rest.
Last Chance,
I passed through you many times and remember you.
You sit on the Colorado Prairie east of Denver at the intersection of two, two lane highways.
In the 1880's you were a stop along the great Texas Montana Cattle Trail.
You really came into your own as a child of the post war Forty's and Fifty's automobile boom.
The say you once were a lively little town made up of gas stations, motels, cafes, a general store, two churches and several homes.
Word has it, you got your name because you were the last chance for travelers to get gas,
food and lodging on their long treks to Denver and Kansas.
In summer, travelers picked cold Cokes, Pepsis and Grape NeHi's out of your gas stations' iced filled soda chests.
In winter, hot steaming coffee flowed from the silver urns of your cafes.
It was Fords, Plymouths, and Chevrolets that created you,
and it was Interstate Highway 70 that bypassed and doomed you
to whither and slowly die.
A prairie fire in 2012 caused by the sparks of a tire blowout finished you off.
Today you are a ghost town of burnt out hulks, abandoned buildings
and distant memoires.
Oh, Last Chance.
The stories you could tell.
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