Tag Archives: restlessness

Dive Bomber On I-40

The trucks heading down the highway in the dead of night
have the high pitched, almost nasally wail of a German dive bomber.
I drink hot coffee, fresh from the pot, knowing I should sleep,
but I can’t sit still or lay contentedly. Like the trucks, I got to be somewhere.
Hot coffee, bitter and black, a harsh and sensual pleasure,
like the filterless cigarettes I gave up long ago. Hot and pummeling
on weak and soft flesh. It somehow makes me feel real and whole.
There is no one here to make me do right. No woman to invite me back to bed.
Dive bombers, on and on, hitting distant targets, distant cities.
My coffee, my inability to dream of a better world, only kisses and lovemaking
and the ghost that is in all flesh, and all birth that is the tears to come.
I don’t know how people can lose themselves in the sun.
When the suns come up, the raids will continue, nothing rectified.
I try to think of a woman, one I know, one I see online and in magazines,
someone to build a momentary kingdom around, a queen to serve faithfully,
and in return she’ll keep the cold and anger and rage safe in her septre.
The trucks roll on, and it’s a cold spring morning, and the sun has come,
laughing his cruel vengeance on my tired eyes, and washed out heart,
and they drop their bombs of mercantile items and promise of wholeness
and I bought into for so long, and I know have no idea what else to do.