I was able to send out a nuclear bomb
Of room-clearing ground zero love
Like a parcel dropped at the crime scene motel
On the way out of more cowbell town
With a husky who rasped exhausted in the UHaul
Through Buttonwillow, Oil City, McKittrick,
The desolation that made Bakersfield hum,
The vistas where the cows got slaughtered,
What the unofficial mayor of Fresno calls the blues,
The way the Tower still stands with the Chicken Pie Shop
And holds her liquor, distilled. The perfume refinery
Keeps its dopamine scroll, at the intermodal of Avenue 24
Downwind from the Atwater onions; if you get
The opportunity to stop in Chowchilla you take it.
A makeshift handkerchief, the kid on the leash knows.
Truckee gets slammed again with snow.
The diggers bring their carts from the creek as usual
To what Marco Polo called “The Great Wall of Tartary”,
The divide they call the Grapevine, where stopping is death
And unforgiveness is beautiful, the deep Pacific fall.
An amateur dogfight broke out over San Diego,
Sent fuselages all over Dresser Street,
But the galactics have assumed control of Los Angeles,
Where Teslas exit time and space.
Sunset in Merced was like no planet on Earth
But you won’t get your money back
From the homeless dude in Freedom Park
For reeking up your hands when you paid to pet his leopard.
