He flops at rest stops
hid by other sleeping truckers.
He likes the loneliness
as the cab windows gradually mist over
with smokey stars.
Rolling on,
cities of light flare upwards
and beneath them
are the unseen, the dead eyed
that hide under a metro-glare.
Amarillo, Detroit, Tacoma, Richmond,
places packed and stacked
with broken dreams and loose ends.
Just driving; hauling and honking.
No one looking.
Launderettes and liquor stores,
five finger fandangos in the back,
chicken wings and Jack D.
Atlantic City, Apalachicola,
soaking in the slipstream
while America looks somewhere else.
What are you watching America?
Sometimes he thinks
only the coyotes are paying attention.
Roads thread through his fingers.
The Great Lakes shimmer,
Rockies rear-up and ripple,
all those dust painted
played-out rural towns,
the roads are his tunnel
through both beauty and depredation.
Old men on roadside benches
stare unphased by his air horn blare'
as if he himself were an 18-wheeled
rolling exhibit of America itself,
yet no one looks long enough
to care.
I flop at truck stops
hid by other sleeping truckers.
I like the loneliness.
Amarillo, Detroit, Tacoma, Richmond,
places packed and stacked
with the bad and the good.
I scoot by paying no heed,
to features, just forms,
how bodies once glimpsed
sometimes return inside of me.
Cities of light, death-heads hidden
no one is looking.
I’m not looking either — just driving through,
hauling and honking.
No one looking.
Launderettes and liquor stores;
five finger fandangos in the back,
chicken wings and Jack D.
Atlantic City, Apalachicola,
soaking in the slipstream
while America looks somewhere else.
What are you watching America?
Sometimes I think
only the coyotes are paying attention.
Roads thread through my fingers.
The Great Lakes shimmer,
Rockies rear-up and ripple.
Moving along not looking,
just driving.
Old men on benches stare
as I hammer on by, and blare,
as if I were an 18-wheeled rolling exhibit
of America itself.
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