Low like the mean dream
of Newark the sky must
have seemed to its builders.
Rickety now, unhinging
you fear you’ll reach the end only
thanks to magic – witch cauldrons
soldered (eye of newt intact)
to forge this highway hubris.
Fifty year old rock cackles
on the radio, loud as
the chemical sunrise, car
lifting over fetid pools of sludge.
Below lies ballad country –
swamps of sawed-up bodies
Saturday night specials
punks in concrete shoes –
and you’re stuck with flat
prose, a gas-good, yawn-blue
compact – probable
logical, responsible and dull.
A skyway wants a gasser
wants a singer, wants a lover
wants a souped-up chrome finned
speedster to ride the rising sky –
last star, lost love
wind fist, soft glove
steel grates drumming
cattails swooning shoop-shoop
trusses bleeding rust
like America’s tied veins.
