one day, i'd like to drive down
these sprawling, empty roads.
i'll start in morning and drive and drive until night.
land so wide and empty,
drive until i feel as though i no longer matter
to anything.
i'll stop at a dinky gas station,
stop to eat at a chain restaurant,
worked by a few employees,
my fellow humans,
who don't want to be there.
i'll look at signs advertising
the mundane and peculiar.
firework store
hurt on the job?
cbd sold here
HELL IS REAL
unreadable graffiti
antique mall, exit 26b
highways that lead everywhere
railroad tracks that lead nowhere
and in me,
i am everything at once and no one.
broken down and abandoned buildings
water towers that look strangely alive
stop signs, bent and twisted in curious ways
rest stop in two miles where i'll grab a brochure or a map and never look at it.
how oddly romantic it is,
i think,
it would be,
my body burning in a church on fire,
the cornfields catch it too.
the radio plays nothing but an angry preacher or static.
and that is the soundtrack to my own western-
gun slinging and dirty saloons
where i belong to no one
but dust and gold coins,
my cattle, and my silly dreams of a
house with a wooden fence,
where i'll rock in a rocking chair
for the rest of eternity.
my america,
i would like to
try
to fall in love with you.
