Amarillo

Highway sorrow cups my heart as

semi trucks whoosh past, blowing my body

into Texas on amphetamine wings.

I soar between the midnight thighs of Amarillo,

another place I don't belong,

stroking her asphalt belly as I pass,

kissing her prairie cowgirl breasts.

This loneliness, these mad, grinning nights.

I am no one's lover, no one's child.

I crash off billboards, loop around street lamps,

breathe fire, commune with bats.

I am lost, Ma,

but this is somehow what I wanted:

This weightlessness, to be a slave to the air

where anything can happen -- pow!

Careening the chrome archways of imprecise

longing, through tunnels of wordless despair;

swooping low, diving, spying on

strange diners, scaring cats.

I am on the lam from gravity,

from the lying sun, outdistancing my losses.

I'm so far gone even God couldn't find me now.

I spread myself out against the cowhide sky

and no one sees me, no one sees me

silhouetted by the moon, walking with

my back turned against whatever's east,

with my cardboard suitcase, my thumb up,

bent and pointed west

toward a shimmering land of dreams.