tabula rasa redneck (1987)

  tabula rasa redneck (1987)

we hit the interstate lethe early to get a jump

on all the traffic, thumbing our noses out the pequod

portholes at a sagging carload from

Friendly Manitoba, brown sedan blonde crewmates,

captain wearing hunting jacket& tie, scouring

clutter of roadsides for tracks of that great 

white worm,  there's a billboard

commanding MAGNIFY JESUS above dwindling

swindling snow left in patches glued to asphalt

w/oily carbohydrates,

neon cedar trees make a pinball game of drab

okie scenery, wounds of exposed roadside soil

bleed persimmon tears with snow melt,

sky etched jet delineates a tabula rasa horizon,

milky golden cattle graze, stretched over landscape,

their vacant stares at subsidy trucks

ease fears of recession,

speared into earth are Bodhisattva electrical towers,

reins of power lashed from dallas the emerald city,

a car on the right of way signals

to cut in, we let him, 

preying mantis highway lamps spy on us,

finally at the edge of OKC, dirty cemetary of

standard steel, a mounted jet guards the

greecian marble company's filth of antiquity,

over the cimmaron

and mud-wrenched middle ages, cancerous 

erosion of this biopsied slab of americana,

black hammers ram oil

from earth, blood of natives long sullied, 

pumped profits to zurich deny roadside cattle

CONCRETE TO GO

                 ---arbuckle moonbounce---

pave the fallen twigs

of ground flesh with a road with no view

                   *

inside stuckey's tourist trap you can git

a plastic redman scalp 

or a buffalo burger broiled in the spandex TeePee

by the diesel pump THREE FER A BUCK cashier's

styrofoamed smirk says resurrect thyself,

fields of beggar's lice rattle their tin cups,

ancient rows of trees planted for windbreaks 

lay cut for firewood, farmhouses dial 

up the thermostat and watch keen eyed hawks

watch the middle east for a mouse 

to scamper across the winnebagoed road

to success, bathed in squished 

grapes of wrath, boom town soil-etude,

horses drop dung

out their trailers under our wheels, 

a semi is painted with the slogan 

SALAD MAKES THE MEAL, past the exit for

gene autry OK, huge samurai towers

lasso clouds, a sign advises do not drive

into smoke &suddenly we're entering Love County

where a man seemingly hitch hikes

while still driving, his thumb

a-praying out the wind'er

1987 

driving with dad