The Road Ahead

I
The air itself is black
The susurration of the Interstate is become the breathing of an unnamable organism

The parking lot outside the diner is almost empty
Light hangs in a column from a lamppost
The silhouette of a hat a face a cigarette
Fluid smoke expands into the columnated light laser'd
A voice

Yeah
I'm the Last of the Americans
I knew the Golden Age
I saw sunlight shine off its polished surfaces
I saw the dimness come
Evеn so I do not regret

I cross the Grеat Continent
Searching
Riding radio waves
Oh my brothers
I too am a Free Citizen of the Lost Nation
I follow any signal until it ebbs
Fated background noise

Inside the babel of proto-life electronic soup
Straining to hear
Adrift only moments
I coax a new carrier wave into amplitude
Off I go again
Into the night
Alive

Thus I cross the great continent
The Unmapped Dark
Like ancient mariners journeyed from one sighting of land to the next
In the rearview my face is lit
Beatific dashboard glow

Free white and twenty-one
You can say you love me
But I'm a sonnuvagun
Tuned in I am home
The Last of the Americans
After us come barbarians

II
There's a river that flows through the heart of darkness
Twisting
Turning back on itself
Like a headless serpent
In its death throes

Along its banks
Deep into the night
Natives are singing a strange song
Ore boats are coaxed upstream
Through impossible geometries
Eruptions of steam
The clang of heavy metals
And the throb of pink noise pulse
As life's blood
Flowing through mills and factories
Linked by random spans of gravel roads
And ancient cantilevered bridges

Flames rise from the ground
In rail yards
The air is dense and granular
Exaggerated Cyclopean tube works
Are woven across roads that are on no maps
Through ballast dumps at the water's edge
Around hills that are glass shards of grouped colors

The confluence of fire and earth
Births steel where the sound of the sun itself
Is trapped inside rust-faced monolithic structures
Shamans who work the molten metals through the night
Are standing outside
Waiting for the bar to open
Their eyes
Outlined by the paler flesh of goggle-protection
Track our pilgrim's progress

Imagine a journey up that river
No end in sight
The memory of there ever having been a starting point
Faded and lost
Imagine time frozen
Leaving no way up and no way out
That was what it was like

III
The machine
Magnificent and graceful
Bounced sunlight from its chromium surfaces
I had to see what it could do
I got it out on the Interstate
Running through the Pennsylvania wilderness
And opened it up
Wildlife scattered in my wake
It was satisfying
A sign hove into view
Satisfied City Exit 1 Mile

Satisfied City is a good place to stop
I said to myself
I saw the road stretch ahead
In order to disappear over the next hill
I had to know
I drove on

Across the flats of Indiana
Through the Indian megalopolis
Of what would become East St Louis
Crossing the Mississippi
Eventually
I came to another sign
Satisfied City Exit 1 Mile
Now that's odd
I said to myself
I looked ahead
I saw the road parallax to the horizon
I had to know
I drove on

After another while
Another sign
You know the story
Thus I crossed the Great Continent

Many miles later
The road is running out on me
I can see the end ahead
I'll drive my once magnificent vehicle
Onto the beach in Bay City
Muffler dragging
Engine steaming
Doors hanging off
I'll walk to the water's edge
Standing before the waves
Of the Immovable Pacific Object
I'll hope the end comes quickly
Before I can recall every Exit I passed to get here

IV
On the other side of every desert is Bay City
Which sits at the end of the road
At the farthest reach of the last straining lunge forward
Of an exhausted dream
At the end of the line
For every Free Citizen of the Future Passive Conditional
Where the irresistible westward urge
Collides with the immovable Pacific Object
And loses

We take our place at the end of that long checkout line
While we wait for time to catch up
We face the mirror
We cross the desert
The buzz of neon on the horizon
Draws us through parched heat
As if it were Reno Nevada itself
Sucking on that long straight straw
Of that great lost highway US50

After the test
After the epiphany
After the vision
The revelation and the satori
The end of the road is
And always has been
Bay City
Where all travelers must come to a Separate Peace
Or be swallowed up