Offramp Tavern
This exit on the lonesome highway
between desiderata and detritus
is not a bad place to pass the time
Construction workers reenact old arguments
with Lou Ferrigno Go
ahead, chase me, Lou!
while baseball and the other ways
they trick little boys into civilization
play all night
Heads like helmets of a defeated army
Faces borrowed, blended and repeated by hardship and rain
sweetened by cheats now ancient enough to be called virtues
—a path in the dirty linoleum where dirty shoes
have worn the dirt away
A broken lampshade sheds light like a torn brassiere
Paper money folds like cold cuts
The band reenacts the last won war
or pleads with the last good thing
just in case it’s listening
Unsounded inside God’s best idea, going on
making no sense, wood grain of our smoke
sidewalk of our spit, plaster of our neglect
The old song, the old three dimensions
same as wherever we were taking a break from
Just glad to be out of the traffic
Road Less Traveled backed up all the way to Garden City
Path of Least Resistance at least as bad
The unmistakable metaphysical underpinnings
of whatever it is you’re up to—the urgent whatever
It ain’t going nowhere
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