America the Beautiful
The horn of our galloping train sounding like two whales mating, packed in like chickens, sunlight bleeding through the beaten planks. I laid my eye on a crease watching California tumble by alive in Van Gogh wildfires, cattle freely roaming the off ramps into suburbia, be-holed as if giant cigarettes were crushed upon them, motel billboards, men swinging briefcases trying to catch the caboose, recessing into the distance, an elephantine tent shredded and snaking against a circus wind. I remember back, the kurplunk of an album falling upon the rotary. A diamond needle searching for the leading groove, Harmon Zorn Orchestra playing America the Beautiful, disheveled along with everyone else the smell of sex rivered into rosemary sheets, Liz looking horrified up at the clock, hours before the wedding softly crying as she grabbed her things. Small urine colored bulbs eking ineffectually off our elastic foreheads, furnaces fed to keep the refrigeration systems functioning, faces chalked in coke spilling out every fifteen minutes, weather updates. We monitored the security cameras; saw nothing but sophomoric acts of disobedience beside the lagoon where pink flowers floated, those neck-high in water lips coated with sugar, pushing through the compressed sea of people, everybody on edge, men toppled over like redwoods behind the microphones, a sea of flesh bent backwards and snapped, absent that one would have found happiness. Sheets of hot rain painting halos around the traffic lights, thinking back to the beginning, before Nicholas was born, escorting his mother’s inebriated malaise out by the statue of Sacajawea where she fell sick clinging tight to her dress, just trying to make it home.
Journey to land of opportunity and beauty makes interesting to read as a novel !
This is well written. If it's a poem, I'd shorten and sharpen the lines just a tweak, but if it's not leave it as it is. Reads very fluidly. I really like how vivid it is. Has a kick to it, a bit of fire. Well penned. tfs