A Hundred Highways...

                             "Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk."
                                                                                       ~Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver

I: Red Thunder Road

I watched the best autumns crumble
into steel-sprayed winters, peeled into
my worst Paul Stuart Vecchia zimarra overcoat
beneath the biting skyscrapers
huddled in the simulacrums of stone cathedrals
crows and crowds and clowns at the taxi stands
waiting for a miracle, for a Messiah
that primal Prometheus,
golems & gothams,
waiting to bum another cigarette
pushing away the hand;
this is our land, this futile make-believe
fantasia ghetto gangster 1950's latenite
last lost jazz show
(something like CHICAGO
played in Paris, Texas, Berlin or Boston, infected
injected with a bite of Giacomo Pucini's  La Bohème'
tuned into the new-cum-now by Jonathan Larson's
rock opera RENT
on & off Broadway, the hardway);
rustpaint blown out of the 40th story-tenement windows;
winds w/ ginsoaked gunshots, saxophone guttaralgrinds,
so the seasons of wither went,
wet,
wept,
wilde,
westward.

(Falls blur into winters,
black rain into coalsmoke snow,
factory cold silent as a slow drive
up that mad-mountain god-ghost
called Red Thunder Road -
you hear about it
whispered in the cobweb corners
under the faded & faint neon
in all the dimestore
truckstops, in those moments between
country songs off the juke, in those
fragmented, oil-stained
small towns
north of all known countries;
desolation's hole)

Another hotel, another highway...

The total totem torn in the sultry trash altars
bent forwards for last year's gods,
like a car-crash, prying and
praying on non-gravity Einstein equations,
sucking in the science of self-satisfaction
the tremendous fringe roll of the surf
off the horizontal horizon bones of streets and
hell-bent roofscapes, the proof-scrapes
of here & now, above & below
devils & angels
downtown under, falling in the suicide subways
the hard ways, drinking scotch & bourbon
while drowning, downing down those benzo-
Valium vinyle monster moments of blurred clarity,
Frankenstienian like, from Gothic to Geneva
the Modern Prometheus,
anonymously London, 1818.
"Physics is a dirty beast, sick,"
the galvanisms of animal electricity
& the City, burying krakens for romantic novel titans,
for who would burn or bound Zeus with fire?
Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, maybe Will Self?

The air swollen with salt moisture and rainbow gasolene,
Hologram fragments of insectile post-cards
Though the flowers were all on the same stem
in the same steam,
                       Today it wasn't either
                        just more chopshock traffic
                       blowing out our rearview windows
                      with more vague questions
"So what?"
says Miles with his horn,
the angels of our flesh cheat the animals of our instinct,
the octopus mode of our enigmatic thorn
paradigms & diagrams; cocaine crytptograms
tentacles of entrance, entranced on our mirror-moon limbs
Stealing Death's
Steely Dan jewelery in the darkness of
our molested modesty. America's crime: passion!
the literary of Burroughs.

Another cockroach hotel, another cockcracked highway...

II: The Hotel Chelsea

So we reach the hill's top. in stillness.
the snows settle. Hell down. nowehere left to go;
this is our Mount St. Helens, our Olympus Mons,
should we cradle in defeat? or jump off that black
James Baldwin bridge-cliff into the oblivious void
of the East Harlem River of sanctuary,
of and into some Another Country...
jump or let the needle in,

shadows, winds, winds, windows...
whispers in the mirrors of
old ghosts, familiar hosts,
forgotten towns

The more less, the more the chance;
depth in perspective for murder
mood or circumstance;
us against nature, deep on the primeaval tongue;
we'll never win, but we can get it done
as sure as god's bleed dogma.

In New York City, 1995
reading Baldwin's Sonny's Blues
on a train, in the subway, under Harlem
down to the Village, to that Hotel
in Chelsea where Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas,
Kerouac & Ginsberg, Sid & Nancy, Leonard Cohen
and all the best & worst of those great minds
where they splintered their
bones on old typewriters
writing poems, writing songs
I felt it, electric;
later hearing Jeff Buckley
Live at Sin-é
perform Hallelujah
I found something of myself
then let it go,

So I take off that raincoat jacket, "fuck it !"
the impeccable road goes forever on
no more waiting at the bus stop on Paper Street
so  I just sat there above Deso lation Hotel
until her mourning was over,
the Italian girl I never mention
(met her in the back of the Hôtel-Dieu
looking in the morgue; bohemian girl,
worn brown boots & short white leather jacket,
jet black hair, green eyes
a small body, almost like a moth's...
Maria?

Marla,
"Che gelida manina"
like a spider she came along)

Riding easttwards
until the morning came, 2am on my wrist-Swiss,
watching the leaves in that
Newburyport, New England season change.
"always another café to crash in,
Johnny Cash on the jukebox like a paradox,"
walking them lines and railroads, those hells
like Clint Eastwood in black,
another road, another town
nameless, priestless
and always another shot of bourbon
always another whiskey kiss,
until she leaves,
"Donde lieta usci "

hotels, highways...

III: Highway 95

"I think I'll go to Memphis, Tennessee,
drive along highway 95
just for the hell of it, maybe
find a girl from the North Country down south,
maybe just keep on drivin'...
a hundred highways yet never enough miles."

Always more highways, never enough hotels.

`End (3rd reincarnation; possibly more).


The Italian translations:
Vecchia zimarra – "Old coat"
Che gelida manina – "What a cold little hand"
Donde lieta uscì – "From here she happily left"