To Florida

Just this once
I'd like to drive
straight through.
Break
only for a fill up, quick piss.
Have someone wide
awake beside me,
an elbow in my ribs
when I'd drift
across the double yellows.
We'd take our time,

Eastern Standard Time,
no rush, no rage.
And every now and then,
my someone at the wheel,
I'd raise up through the moon roof,
feel what breeze feels
long before it's gale.
Coast,
never come to complete stops,
no matter how octagonal
or red the signs.


Packin'

Again, the girl forgot the ketchup.
Who eats fries without the ketchup? Who?

What
are diners coming to?

Take church!
Who goes without a piece?
Prayers end in booms.
Empty cartridges clink in collection plates.

Ceilings of nearly every building leak.
No wonder roofers get shot up the most:
easy targets
up there on their slates.

Where's the yellow mustard?
Who's got the gall to swipe the salt?

Glad I wore my Kevlar.
Still I tip big walking out.


Breaking the News

Chet's on Ativan
for everyday he knows today
could be the one,
tonight right after Letterman,
beer number seven.

It's not so good to mix elixirs,
lager and lorazepam,
then both hands always full or
always empty's not good either

as he slowly gets the feeling back
in his toes, jumps up
off the couch to join
the pigtailed Prozac taker
polkaing down the country lane of commercial breaks,

clover and Holsteins on both sides feeding each other,
Chet, clueless
why nothing out here smells like shit
or ever has to.


Chicken Little

Going nowhere in particular, I run
my best ahead of jets unzipping sky.

Something always happens
just as they're over the equator

and I am yards outside of my perimeter.
Maybe it has rained or a spell of freak hail.

For sure the air above is borrowed
and my years old.

When jets are done and sky is yawning,
a smoky trail shows up. Then doesn't.

One of these tomorrows the sky is going
to start to want things back.

I begin with little pieces by pieces
as recommended by my astronomer.

I pick up hitchhikers with litter in their pockets,
broken glass inside their backpacks.

I am good for months or miles. When over,
the sky will have my reach around it.


Atlas

Pull the curtains back and there it is,
the Northern Hemisphere.
Walk outside on the spiral lawn and there it is
going down the road.
A day begins.
Get on with it.

Supersonic pilot neighbor
flies around the world several times at top speed
and gets his week in early.
He leaves his heart in 37° 37' N latitude,
122° 23' W longitude, singing.

Foggy days neighbor on the cul-de-sac starts up
her SUV with GPS to tell her where she is.
Costly extras include a printout of just how far she's
come.

Can't remember who in New Hampshire has a combo
walking stick/dowsing rod but every evening
someone finds Roy, yup, that's him, Roy, at the ocean.

Kids don't get car sick now their dads aren't going
in circles. Not going is like that in some places.
Take Nebraska.

Where's that good old paper map that smells like fuel?
Best visit little towns before they wear away
inside its folded corners.

In days to come, ones we do not love or even know
will worry we'll stop by before they're dressed. By then
there'll be no place to go we won't know how to get to.
What good is going if we can't get lost in
in Mississippi?


Walks

Hawk walks the sky on I-beams.
Looks down doesn't throw up!

Just one of those things you either can
or can't do. Lately it takes all I got

to walk to and from my hotdog
stand there on the corner. Hawk

triples mustard. Talks
over crickets in his ears. I see

faraway in his eyes, his home upstate,
on clear days clear to Pennsylvania.

I tell him many of my ancestors there
walked in and out of earth for coal.

He gets shaky just thinking of
walking in and out of earth.

I hand a relished footlong
to a sailor here for a little R & R

and can't hold back. Nor Hawk. So, sailor,
how do you walk out there on water?


New Jersey

The Browns are found dumb
with the disappearance of their white cow
in the Pine Barrens.

How she went unnoticed
by everyone except the neighbor's beagle
among the drying bed sheets

they don't know.
How she mazed through fleets
of anonymous service vans,

brides at the 24-hour chapel/diner
they don't know.
Neighbor's beagle broke its chain,

chains of its beagle pals
and off they strode
down Black Horse Pike.

Browns believe they'll find her
when they go fishing
off the Boardwalk.

How can we not, they ask, how
can we not just love
New Jersey?


Appalachia

Under us
still
millions of mammals

millions
of years old
in the rock.

Even before sun's up,
chinking starts.
Old giants

come apart at their seams. Giants
with incisors and scales,
giants with molars and hair or fur, tails.

Cords of their long bones
are trucked down the highway
to museums.

Pieces
patch gaps
in timbers of shanties.

Above them, above rock,
clouds make themselves into mammoths
into moles...