--- R Y A N   G .  V A N   C L E A V E

Pitchless hum of miles pouring past, there's nothing in the Dodge Dart
           but me and America (with a capital A), 
glowing like two tequila worms doused with a little Uranium-238,
           and we're sweeping up
the hillsides through this fall night like the golden-red combination
           of azaleas exploding into bloom;
time is our synchrony out here where the humid scent of barnacles
           swirls up from some unseen sea
ever here in the oil-drum belly of Kansas, and we're the only great
           shape swimming toward lighter water, 
a sea turtle with rusted eyelids and honeycomb teeth.  Suppose
           I've got a painter's sensibility,
that I know a little something about passing a bottle of tokay
           with wino-artists; what then?
The horizon beckons like a purple Elvis velvet painting and all
           I can think of are the whale-bodied 
hills ahead and what slaphappy fools we are to plunk down rent
           each month in the land of opportunity
where folks like Packers fans have their Green Bay trailer-sized
           homes, a hunting cabin up nearer 
to Canada, and another small lodge in Ellison Bay in Door County
           where (only in America) you can buy
she-male porno next door to where an ex-Amish woman named Mary 
           makes the best almond fudge in the universe, 
bar none.  So it's just me and America in my $2,800 junk-clunker
           struggling through Houston, Little Rock, Reno,
no real trajectory other than away because I'm permanently twisted
           from bending over backwards
to pay for new spark plugs, to cover a Waffle house tab, to pay
           for these new glow-in-the-dark heelstripe Nikes 
some Papua New Guinea child stitched together for eleven bucks
           only to haven them passed off now 
as hundred-and-ten dollar bargains (blow-out, bust-up, slap-me-if-I'm-
           kidding lowest prices around!) and maybe 
it wouldn't be so bad, such a damn lonely trip, if I could ditch the Georgia 
           logger who won't stop with his "Dollar to a donut, 
we'll see a Hawaii license plate in five minutes," or William Clinton
           (that sexual vampire) and the WWF maestro,
The Undertaker, in all his luminous facepaint, and it's pretty clear
           that by America I mean everybody's here
in my lime-colored, hatchback 1979 Dodge Dart that's mulepathing
           towards the Mojave like a leviathan 
eternally hunting for more space, and before long, there's Juan Valdez
           moaning in his flat ungoverned tone 
about purified souls and I wonder about our culture and how quickly
           it's devouring itself in the name of Jesus
and the strange religion of capitalism where He With The Biggest Wallet
           Wins, a shift towards the slippery and dangerous
that happened halfway through my frightfully short life.  Starving heart
           tattoos and bowling alley nighthawks,
I see them all as I whiz past at 67 mph, and I think "Here's a narrative
           about Fear, about Inertia," and I don't know
whether I mean them or me, but that's the point, isn't it?  Out here,
           in this untranslatable last gasp towards 
the final frontier, it's all a kind of frenzied, jackhammer second-guessing
           as I wonder what "individual liberty"
really means, and if by virtue of living in the 90s that my one-eyed
           babysitter (Lynda) who couldn't pronounce 
"Chappaquidick" is truly "empowered."  But westward still, the dawn's
           ballyhooeing in the rearview, caring not a whit
for ballooning insurance, the FED, or sales tax on a pair of velcro-sealing 
           diapers, and I see it blossom with flame, an effigy
like the day Vanna White quit "Wheel of Fortune," and I feel it knock
           inside me like a jingoistic campaign slogan
I can't shake from my head-oh, how I want to warm my little tootsies
           by the heat of those magnificent flames,
and in this moment, key yanked from the ignition, I'm triumphantly human.