The Road Map of America / Lost Days Long Nights (5:16)
The Road Map of America/ Lost Days Long Nights
Chris Chandler / Paul Benoit
the road-map that is America unfolding
ahead of me
from God’s own glove compartment
and then being used as a napkin
to wipe the grease from our chicken fingers
purchased from the devil’s own drivethru
discarded
out the window
of want
and summersaults past
silos and skyscrapers that materialize
upon the horizon
and then disappear
through the tiny black hole
that is my rearview;
dogs and horses parading the pasture
where dogwoods and horsemint bloom;
urban blight and rural decay,
solid white cotton fields like freshly fallen snow,
softening the Carolina landscape;
picked by illegal immigrants,
and shipped to chemical plants in Brazil,
transformed into the latest poly-fibre, 15% cotton
and shipped to Bangladesh
and sewn into table clothes
and shipped back to South Carolina
to be stocked upon the shelves
of a Walmart
by the very same people
that once worked in the textile mills
that lie abandoned
along the thin highways of fat america;
Purple Mountains Travesty and Amber waves of in-equality;
Mudflap Angels and divisive bumper stickers
redefine patriotism on the rear bumper
of a 1974 Ford Galaxy with a
mask-less driver and a West Virginia license plate;
billboards blaring, “God, guns and gentlemen’s clubs”
fail to see their own irony;
Jesus Christ embossed
in stark black and white post-social realism style
with bright red realistic blood dripping from an etched crown of thorns,
“This Blood’s for You!” it reads;
A baseball Glove, Apple Pie and an AR-15,
“PURE AMERICAN,” it reads;
high heeled hellcat in fishnets,
“Hot Legs, Always Hiring, Beer Special noon to 4 AM
Amateurs and Couples Welcome,” it reads.
Headlights on
Gas prices as low as the traffic, and my expectations
18 Wheelers lined up at ports of call ferrying Prime next day deliveries beneath telephone and power lines.
rain, refineries and rainbows;
the freshly paved asphalt glistens prismatic in the Appalachian drizzle
Windshield wipers slapping time,
I was holding no one‘s hand in mine
as we i sang every song
the radio knew.
Chris Chandler / Paul Benoit
the road-map that is America unfolding
ahead of me
from God’s own glove compartment
and then being used as a napkin
to wipe the grease from our chicken fingers
purchased from the devil’s own drivethru
discarded
out the window
of want
and summersaults past
silos and skyscrapers that materialize
upon the horizon
and then disappear
through the tiny black hole
that is my rearview;
dogs and horses parading the pasture
where dogwoods and horsemint bloom;
urban blight and rural decay,
solid white cotton fields like freshly fallen snow,
softening the Carolina landscape;
picked by illegal immigrants,
and shipped to chemical plants in Brazil,
transformed into the latest poly-fibre, 15% cotton
and shipped to Bangladesh
and sewn into table clothes
and shipped back to South Carolina
to be stocked upon the shelves
of a Walmart
by the very same people
that once worked in the textile mills
that lie abandoned
along the thin highways of fat america;
Purple Mountains Travesty and Amber waves of in-equality;
Mudflap Angels and divisive bumper stickers
redefine patriotism on the rear bumper
of a 1974 Ford Galaxy with a
mask-less driver and a West Virginia license plate;
billboards blaring, “God, guns and gentlemen’s clubs”
fail to see their own irony;
Jesus Christ embossed
in stark black and white post-social realism style
with bright red realistic blood dripping from an etched crown of thorns,
“This Blood’s for You!” it reads;
A baseball Glove, Apple Pie and an AR-15,
“PURE AMERICAN,” it reads;
high heeled hellcat in fishnets,
“Hot Legs, Always Hiring, Beer Special noon to 4 AM
Amateurs and Couples Welcome,” it reads.
Headlights on
Gas prices as low as the traffic, and my expectations
18 Wheelers lined up at ports of call ferrying Prime next day deliveries beneath telephone and power lines.
rain, refineries and rainbows;
the freshly paved asphalt glistens prismatic in the Appalachian drizzle
Windshield wipers slapping time,
I was holding no one‘s hand in mine
as we i sang every song
the radio knew.