Hamburgers fries coffee & gasoline

the service station huddles behind the road sign.

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Truckers roll on down the interstate, big metal geese of honking song.

'Cuz out on the asphalt the trucker roams free, 

gasoline hamburgers fries & coffee.

 

They laid that ladder down

and it grew into train tracks

so hop aboard with the hobo blues man,

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'Share yer soup, be loose with yer change

the sheltering train keeps us out of the rain.

Sing yer song and gnaw yer bone

til' the Lord reaches down

and takes us all home.’

 

Gasfoodlodging gasfoodlodging

climbing clouds crowd up the sky

marmalade light turning morning to night.

And all those little prairie doggies

pop their heads high out the hole houses.

 

Starlight on the cacti

moonlight in the canyon

thunderstorms hide flickering stars

comet tails make sparking worms

lightning splinters, dancing knives

raindrop bees down heaven’s hives.

 

Flashing lights strobe over the plains 

cracking in vertical rivers. The rains flood

the seats of an abandoned Chevy Impala

asleep in rust, dripping midnight.

 

The storm, despotic, batters the hood

dripdropdripdrop wasteland rest stop.

 

Stick figures roam cave walls 

boulders watch the tumbleweeds

the humpty dumpty wicker steeds

rolling wild like billiard shots.

 

Inching insects in sunrise blankets

humming, marching, serenading

collecting up the twigs and trinkets

herding the seconds of morning.

 

The wind’s melodeon cry

the rising sun in the scaffolding sky

lighting this rusting industrial scene

off the Bear Tooth Highway 

in the Great Horn Basin

where the land reaches out vast and lean,

hamburgers fries coffee & gasoline.

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From The Opulence Of Invention. Copyright © 2018 E. P. Mattson, All Rights Reserved.