Running With Your Arms Out

Driving across the Midwest
You want to stop the car
Run out onto the vast plains
With your arms out
Feel where the sky touches the dry yellow earth

The air seems cleaner
Crisper
Your pores open to feel the air and breathe
Like you’ve always promised them they would

You want to be a part of that Midwestern painting You’ve seen
You want to run through a Jon Steinbeck book
You’ve read

But you don’t
You’re logical,
And your friend
Is a bummer
“What would you do once you got out there?”
“We don’t want to get in trouble”
Finally, you’re convinced
“Yeah, I’d just pant hard, walking back to the car.”

You can’t stop the momentum of the car
Or your life
You can’t push down on the brakes
And walk out onto the earth
That’s touching the sky

But that’s not me
I always make sure I pull over
Step over the fox fence
And run
With my arms out

—-

Bazooka Day

If I were rich
I mean filthy, stinking rich
I’d call up the Mayor of Bozeman, Montana
And buy a mountain range
The beautiful kind
Far off in the distance
With snow white summits
And that light blue glow
It’s an impressive part of the earth
That sniffs the sky
The horizon of Bozeman, Montana’s super highway
A beauty to gaze at
If I was rich
I mean filthy, stinking rich
I’d buy that mountain range
And have ‘Bazooka Day’
It would consist of
A couple of friends of mine
About nine
We’d have old aluminum lawn chairs
One for each of us
And snacks
And a grill
And a lot of beer
Tall cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon
We’d also have a missile launcher—
Maybe three
And plenty of missiles
And RPG’s
And an RPG launcher
The kind from the great movie ‘Red Dawn’
We’d sit there all day and shoot our missiles and RPG’s
At my mountain range
We wouldn’t be that good
And that would make it all the more fun
Maybe we’d give one of my friend’s girlfriends
A life-sized Hummer
She could control it by radio control
And we’d all try to blow it up
With our missiles and RPG’s
But we wouldn’t be that good
And we’d probably be kind of drunk
But that would make it all the more fun
Like when you stink at bowling
And everyone gets a razz ‘cause it’s your turn to toss
We’d sit there in our decrepit lawn chairs
Shooting missiles and RPG’s
At my Montana mountain range
In Bozeman Montana
If I were rich
Filthy, stinking rich

—-

“We sell beer, gas and condoms”

It says ‘Variety Store’
The rest stop off route 90
For the 180 items the store offers
They only sell about 9:

Beer
Gas
Cigarettes
Chips
Candy
Soda
Porno magazines
Scratch tickets
And condoms

No one buys the statue of the howling wolf for $400.00
Or dirt encrusted plastic kids’ toys from 1983
Not even the XL T-shirts - 3 for $10.00
Neither the petrified eagle claw
Nor fake snake skin boots
The tasseled jackets with an airbrushed squaw and infant?
Nope

That’s all extra junk
A way to have things on the shelf
The sign should read:

“We sell beer, gas, and condoms”

—-

If The Bomb Hits

If the bomb hits
None of those
Electronic bathrooms
Will work anymore
Piss
And
Shit
Will be everywhere
Like the toilet at a rock show
But worse
Travelers will still stop
At rest side shops
Buy over-priced gas
And coffee
But when it’s time to
Piss
And
Shit
It will be in a room
Of excrement
A muddy skunk patch of human waste
Or maybe, we’ll all approach
The building with medical masks
Or by fashion’s choice
Attractive bandanas
Covering our noses
We’ll gag as we approach
The bathroom that has
Piss
And
Shit
Falling out its doorway.
If we can stomach walking in
We’ll do our business on the ground
On the collective waste of others
Or maybe,
Just behind the building
Gagging and throwing up from the stench
Of our own
Piss
And
Shit
But that will be the norm
After those
Electronic bathrooms
Stop working
If the bomb hits