Amish Buggies
 
Twice a month
a tourist crashes
into one, topples
the black cab
and leaves its horse
dead in the road
TV news predicts
the plain folk
will soon flee,
surrender windmills
and barns built
by hand,
surrender houses
lit by oil light,
where scripture 
is read nightly
and their rule 
of life recited.
But they persist,
clop through
heavy traffic,
ignore the faces
of city gawkers
safe behind steel doors.
Slow chariots
risk the loud, sudden
crash, even death,
as if the drivers 
drove to save
their children’s souls.

The Lost Kids of New Orleans

Inked, pierced, dressed
in tie-dye rags, they walk
the old brick streets
barefoot.

Some play a beat-up
guitar for spare change
and cigarettes,
even play in the rain.

Others dance in
Jackson Square
when no music is playing,
dervishes on
the gray flagstones.

They all have a story:
parents who kicked
them out for refusing
to work, stay in school,
mine caves in Afghanistan.

At sundown, they sit
by the river, huddle
in groups of twos
and threes smoking
a glass pipe for residue.

And they sing, laugh
crazily while the moon
slowly rises on them,
rises until they fall
asleep in each other’s
dirty arms, not lost
at all.

Hunter Thompson in Hell

A three-bedroom house,
a wife, 2.2  kids,
a job that would bore
a machine.

A couple of beers
on Saturday night,
church on Sunday,
sex once a month.

And cookouts on
the fourth, lame fireworks
and a flag flying
from every porch.

Not one person willing,
even willing to dream
of driving all night
through the desert,

driving with a trunk
filled with LSD
and dynamite,
plenty of dynamite,
enough to explode
the American dream.

Hearse for Sale

Up and down the main street
of Dover someone is driving
a green hearse with tinted windows.

It goes for a modest price,
a phone number written large
with a black magic marker.

The hearse  rolls  by slowly,
as if a body were still inside,
a coffin for a fresh grave.

But the sun sets on this
strange sight, the driver turning
off  the square for the next small town.

Who, if anyone, will pay to own it?

Maybe it will be sold for parts,
vanish into the bodies and engines
of cars driven to lifelong jobs.

Maybe in some home garage,
it will be rebuilt to outrun anything
on the open road, death itself.

Pavlov’s Dog

What happened to
the poor beast?

Did he slowly
starve to death,
still barking at bells
that never brought
a dish of food?

Or did they feed him
just enough to keep
him alive, prove
the experiment 
worked again
and again?

Maybe he escaped.

There were city streets,
garbage cans to
eat from, until he
he was forgotten,
a permanent stray.

And maybe he lived 
long enough to
ignore the sound
of any bell,
church or streetcar,
saliva never dripping 
from his tongue.

He snarled when anyone
came near, tried to
lure him into a
 van with other 
lost dogs.

All cages were
the same,
all masters quick
to tame and teach
new tricks,
amaze their friends.