[In my analysis of Peter Drucker’s analysis of Japan through Japanese art, I pointed out that Drucker ignored the Samurai sword in his commentary on that country’s aesthetic topology. An American artist would similarly be guilty of ignoring the obvious, in an investigation of cultural determinants, if he did not discuss the influence of the Freeway on this country’s collective imagination. ]

Road Word

To trans-navigate America
I prefer the 40. To dream
America, the Road is endless.

In the womb of a combustion
machine on wheels, Bruce prays
to God the State trooper please
don’t stop me, Cormac wrote it
as a walking epic, so as to grieve
us most, not by horseback, as
a Blood Meridian. 1000 guitars
1000 poets, 1000 killers &
1000 dreamy girls. The Lao Tsu
is not built by Ike or with concrete.
The Chinese knocked down
mountains for the rails, not the
white lines of Jackson Browne or
John Cash or Willie Nelson, or
any other bard since Woody or
Leadbelly who rode the vision
on four tires, instead of inside
boxcars. I see farms, remember
them painted with red, man.

In the West, the Powwow
Highway, drums and songs
as the mist rises on the plains,
under cattle mostly, not bison,
I stopped for Elk in the Valle
Grande, but that was a blue
trail. Shooting out the window
on the driver’s side, over the dash,
things being closer than they
appear to be, visited by ghosts
on a winding path to the airplane
graveyard, to the meth shacks
in the foothills beyond, windmills
like giants, nothing like Cervantes’

In he dozy rhythm of the oil rigs
of Texas, the cracking rocks of
Needles, or the blood of Santa Fe.
3-point perspective is real. For one
who is monoptical, this means nada.
Racing sundown across Arizona,
toward Flag from Albuquerque,
pushing parallel to the Very Large
Array, whether through snow or
beneath painted sky, across painted
desert, north of the petrified forest,
dragons of fiberglass cheering
as we skip Show Low.

From West Virginia to Valdosta
New Orleans to Houston, and back
to school, in South Bend, originating
on Cape Cod, at Hyannisport, with a
quick stop in White Plains, an overnight
in Philly and one in Pittsburgh, or
another time in a van with a dozen
speakers cut into the walls, from
home with liberty to NYC, on a run
to deliver the art to nobody for nothing.
…

Or pulling a 24-hour straight run
each leg, to score weed for the wedding,
killing it with a one-hitter, from
up Humboldt way with its redwoods…

Or crossing the Northmost route,
skimming Wyoming ranges, dusting
crows feasting on roadkill at roadside,
to climb Mt. Hood in camo for the
greatest sunset of all time, then
the waves crashing on Northcoast
beach, like Scotland but America…

Or Chicago, the LOOP, or I-25 to
the silos of South Dakota, gone
nuclear, swarmed by a million
Harleys en route to Sturgis,
not us - we got off at Pine Ridge
or Rosebud, to study trees
and sky-wide thunderstorms.

Big birds of prey, scanning fields atop
posts or towers, on wires or in leafless
trees, swoop down on rabbits. The roadside
parks, with their foul stench of excrement,
reminded me always of the filthy pools
of death in the wildebeest sagas on National
Geographic. Haunted by nightmares
caused by 100 gory movies that star
a lunatic with guns or blades or saws
or dressed as a cop, an alien driving
an 18-wheeler, worse than any wrathful
diety on a tanka. Now it’s a gamer game,
less and more real or terrorfying.

We played with toy Hot Wheels
cars, we loved them, we pined for a
license, had sex for the first time on
weird vinyl-covered cushions, spilled
seed between the backrest and the
seat, like coins, or candies. We as
family journeyed to the sandy beaches
of South Carolina to stroll the strand,
between rollercoasters and nervous
breakdowns, and for some of us,
whiskey fueled our machines just
like gasoline for the fires in the belly
of the spaceshuttle by Chevy or Ford.
Built by steely men in Detroit and
Pennsylvania, amidst smoky wars
in unions that changed the world,
winning against the world, the Hitler
and Tojo and Stalin, never stalling,
not like the Custom 10 with a computer
carburetor that nearly killed me on
an Ohio logging road. We piled into
the station wagon to watch Pete Rose
play baseball in Cincinnati or Yaz
in Boston, or the time trials at Indy.
I drove a Trans Am, my first vehicle,
to Notre Dame, to smash it, to slide
sideways through the intersection
on three rims dodging citizens - to
learn high-speed maneuvers, turbo-
charged, louvers on the rear window,
honeycombs, a Golden Eagle on
black steel, 6.6 liters, 180s or 360s
over the ice - JP thought it was for
escaping, but he wasn’t right. That
one was for wrecking and dying,
one Michigan lights-off moonlit
night at a time - I could not comprehend.
The scope, the scale, the itinerary.
I could’ve used an Atlas.

I saved my first lives grabbing
the wheel in Nebraska in 82 or 3.
Blasting thru the blizzard, east
out of the Rockies, when the archie
from the suburbs fell asleep at the
wheel with his eyes wide open.
Since then I hit stuff and missed
stuff, dodging concrete barriers
in construction zones in the Olds
with the burned out U joint and
screwy brakes, little Brian Boru
snoozing in the passenger seat
on the Road to Eureka…

Grand Canyon to Vegas, Mad-town
to Austin, to OK City to KC, and
all points in between, but it’s
the spaces that make the man.

Fuck Ayn Rand. She was a pussy.
West Side poser. & all the others
like that except for Speed Levitch,
who anthropomorphizes the city
the way the road should be done.
Take HIM, on a double-decker
to San Francisco, and make Ayn
listen, can’t get out of her seat,
til we stop for gas. & Fuck all
those suits who adore Ayn Rand,
who jet from here to there, who
buy foreign cars for cloverleaf
turns, and valet parking. No
good at Yellowstone, and the RVs
from Elkhart squash them like bugs
daily on PCH. Or the Gila. Or
practically anywhere the earth is
unpaved and men can still see
100 miles in all directions
unencumbered by vertical planes
of glass and rivets, I beams
and elevators. Black ice is
a killer. Wildfires. Dust
Devils, Tornados. Double rainbows,
or more, once we had one light
up the inside of the vehicle
& before you knew it, I was
dancing the Hula in the waves
of Kauai, but the spectrum
manifested somewhere in the
Smokies. Before the tunnels.
Near streams that still
breed fish and hard shoulders.

I have known a man who built the
Road with a WPA gang. Ayn’s Roark
is bullshit. Bukowski would’ve kicked
her and his ass, and Ginsberg
would’ve felched either one. My mountaineer,
70 or so but still muscled with all his
original teeth smile, at the gym to pump
iron, a tough geezer, now, broke stone by day
during the First Great Depression, he did
and built porches or mined coal by evening.
He still could nod off standing up. Some
kinds of tired you never age out of. He
speaks in fiddles and Rockabilly is his
son, and the Allman Brothers are his
grandkids. Hunter S knew the Road
whereas Wolfe was a poodle. Gonzo ripped
it in Cobras, Wolfe in a dashing white
leisure outfit to dazzle critics.

Capote? In Cold Blood?
Worse than West Side poser.
No form of meditation has ever been
bloodier. No type of dream
has kilt more creatures.
No prayer to movement
has carved bigger temples,
no kind of treasure
ever cost more or less.

Dodging drunk-driven rigs
in El Paso or Pecos,
batons and dreamsticks
in Milwaukee or Boston,
writing songs by campfires
and stories on napkins,
scarfing chicken-fried steak
in truck stops from sea
to shiny sea, or lobsters
or crawdads and homemade
cherry pie, cold beers
or biscuits and gravy,
burritos with green chile,
smothered or fucking
like angels in Trinidad
and Marfa, or some bright
blue pool in a lady’s backyard
as the geese honked in the dusk
- pistols in our belts,
or knives in our boots,
rolls of pennies or a lead pipe,
of a bishop club made of pine,
a Kali stick, a switchblade
that came from Italy as a comb
- theer ain’t no way
to unnerstand
the violence of Americans
unless you’ve counted
bodies along a 1000 miles
stretch of Highway

People Come
People Go

Tunes? Tuning an engine, like a
cello, in an opera pit, they call
the garage hole a pit, and its a
riff blowing out a ring of rubber
from some tropical clime, as you
descend another mountain pass,
like the one where people ate
each other in the dead of winter,
like savages, and howled like
wolves or banshees, and strange
reflecting eyes in the bushes,
over yonder, as you pass at 100mph,
on your way to a rendezvous,
in Bloomington, with tan thighs
and sweat and summer all on you,
bugs exploding by the millions
across your windshield, driving
bass shaking the frame of your
smoking casket, blurred past
distinction, one of hundred million
seeking a deadline’s resolution,
on a timeline with his maker,
fiercely counting the turns
across the dial of the AM or FM
or CD, scanning for a friendly
voice, a human, a beacon.
The Beatles never wrote a decent song
and are minor. Dylan, maybe. The Doors.
Yes. But also Hank, and even Kraftwerk
& 1000 USA tours & bands of brothers,
home from wars or college to be
never seen again alive. One turn,
too many, like James Dean in his
roadster, and another white cross
with plastic garlands, a picture
maybe, no inscription. Insurance
covers none of it, like an EMT
blanket over a shattered body,
one of 50000 each year, as the toll
rises, year on year, decade on
decade, whatever the speed limit,
or President’s name or party
running Congress. The numbers
accrue.

Some Roadmen, by birth must be,
are Drivers [I am one, though I have no
3D, and am handicapped, hence 4D, &
thus adapting], some are Navigators,
a few are Mechanics… All are valuable.
The wrenches that tune the motor.
So fine, when all the cylinders align.
Like stars, better than any movie
Hollywood could think of. This is all
off the top of my head, but the Road
is a good place for lists, of favorites,
of champions, of this thing or that one,
numbering lost loves or dislikes,
cataloguing possessions or teachers,
but what mentor surpasses the Road?
Which quote or picture can capture
its spirit? No white border contains
it! No bright lights divide it. No
one soul can own it. No shotgun can
kill it. The only thought big enough
is the Road, and it diminishes the
static, absorbs evolution. It is a
transmission. It has a tradition.
John Henry and the Steam Engine
become one entity. A single union.
Part flesh, parts mechanical.
Needing directions and going
somewhere, a destination, always
in relation to Home, or Mama,
plunged into chaos and ferocity
like a boy named Sue, or the Jim
you don’t mess around with,
contriving or concocting or plain
conning a myth, a story with a
job description, a technical
manual, right there in the glove
box, techne, following lines,
not in a convoy, but more
dimensional, a pilgrimage
to nowhere, but ever here.

The passing lane has been ruined
by minivans. Not a caravan, or
a VW van, with all its hippie
dope-addled associations, or
disassociations, it started
with the bastard Reagan, somehow,
hating the government that was
us, that we gave to ourselves,
that invented the GI Bill, a
middle class, a third lane,
not too fast or slow, easygoing,
cruise control, electrified
windows and locks, power steering
for the ladies, room for the
babies in the back, and luggage,
not belongings, on vacation,
not holiday, seeing the country,
not moving, putting miles on
the odometer, stopping at motels,
exploring along Route 66, then
not getting lost, not even having
to get out of the motor home,
traveling with an airstream on
a hitch, picking up hitchhikers,
like my Dad and John Witherspoon,
who would save a few bucks and
thumb to California or Chi-town
or Florida, not long in any one
place, not getting murdered,
getting to know the nation &
the people… & now to know
this, to have listened to stories
is to comprehend the loss of it, to
understand the corpratist plague. I,
Artificial Person, in effigy burned,
BTA bottles on the berm, uniformity
and domination by property control
of the sacred exit space, the transit
point, the entrance, the re-entry…
As if this were life. We all figure
out it’s easier to destroy than to
build. It’s easier to build cheap
than it is to build to last.
Credit cards made washing dishes
a thing of the past, and three
generations were lost, each less
American than the last, so that
today no one will fight in the
streets, our home.

Across the USA, the woven form -
a pattern of petro-polymers
in seductive by test-sample colors,
the timed arrivals or departures, lowest
common denominator, subsistence
humanity, one dour acne-plagued
obese teen with grim eyes and grimy
apron after the next, hoping for escape
or the shift’s end, another yellow-lit
surveilled lot sprinkled with litter,
a unique moment cauterized
remotely, by annual report -
wage slaves at point of sale, small
town America, drained of revenue,
a mysterious carcass,
pumps of EXXON churning,
unattended, repeat, repeat,
the war machine burns half the
world away to fuel it, as the Davos
Men reconvene to redesign
1000 pioneer villages of blood,
bone, mapped by Rand McNally
- no more loco radio, no more
soda stand, no more BBQ,
no more preacher in the inky
early morning, eye out for deer
and besot with bad recollections,
tempered with bad intentions,
gun-toting, amber-swilling
vengeance just over the horizon.

…it won’t be an Arab, boys.
Unless it’s one from Egypt, Tejas
or Memphis, growed in the
shade of a pyramid by a river
with a red indian name.
There’ll be scalps and worse,
there’ll be hunters of men,
no TV tower Law & Order,
no Dostoevsky, except,
“Deprived of meaningful work,
men and women lose their reason
for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”

Or Clint Munny: Deserves got
nothin to do with it. You were
building a house. When the bridge
fell in the river.