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We’re all country roads.
We’re all city slickers and purple mountain royalty.
We’re all dirty, clean-shaven boys in white tees.
But in this truck, you’re either Woody Allen
or James Dean.
For now, we all spit mutually,
with the epicenters
pools of bittersweet tobacco flakes filling our cheeks.
And our focal point:
the loose collection of dirt molested
by the big, black truck zooming down
the mountainside, zipping past the orange leaves
with a slapdash excitement.
Gripped tight on the edge of the tailgate,
I’m holding a cigarette.
In my other hand
a beer can
resides on my bouncing, pointed knee.
Pete has his arm around his girl
(in loose terms)
they’re debating the importance of the sexual revolution.
They eye me occasionally
with a keen awareness that I’m slowly killing myself.
But for now, my life—our lives—rest
on our navigator’s hand whimsically
attached to the steering wheel at one point
and poking the black AM radio at another.
He refuses to hold his beer between his legs
it’ll get warm, he says
so we risk it for him.
And, as usual, we make it to the spot
to spread our legs and finish the beer on a jade-stained carpet
beneath a canopy/collage of blue sky and backlit orange leaves.
Then, we men march;
We totter like drunk skunks
to the rusted bridge with a 90-foot-drop.
Below, a brown, slow-moving river
glazes the bronze women.
We stand amongst the corroded bars, and listen to talk
from bullshitting old men
who tell us of memories that still shoot oil
through their rusted blood.
I enlighten them all
in my drunken swagger that
I’ll lead the pack.
I’ll jump.
So I put my legs over the bars, take off my T-shirt
and crawl down to a hang
My heart thumps, thumps and I let go.
Though my ears no longer hear
the young girl’s shouts of praise
or the proverbs of those acidic old men
I still hear the boys chanting
“You went.”
“You went first.”
“You went first, you
James Dean, you.”
n./a. gaudio
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Comments about this poem (Americana
by
n./a. gaudio
) |
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comments about this poem (Americana by
n./a. gaudio
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Uriah Hamilton
(4/14/2007 8:03:00 PM) |
A lovely poem in the drunken sadness of reality of overwhelming truth of human fragility and purposelessness.
My regards,
Uriah
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Goldy Locks
(3/7/2007 1:07:00 PM) |
your thoughts are not what are disjointed but some of the ideas, misplace the reader. where they are situated, at times -
i think it is done unintentionally. Meanwhile, your references are spec..tacular! Goldy
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Ivan Donn Carswell
(2/4/2007 3:52:00 AM) |
Then you're a black 'n white celluloid boy with a scratchy soundtrack JD doing the serious, flippant wave of the hand. Great imagery. Live long... IDC
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