poem of the day 06.24.15

love’s travel stop (sunday afternoon)

it’s already ninety degrees out

not even one in the afternoon

i curse the climate while taking a piss

in the men’s room at love’s travel stop

somewhere in pennsylvania

where every billboard on the turnpike is telling me

energy taxes are killing the working man

and that the bible is absolute, true and final

there’s a country music song playing

something about springsteen songs and lemonade stands

men on the moon and fireflies in june

the singer tells me that we don’t always get it right

but there’s nowhere he’d rather live than america

i’m glad that i don’t know the song

but there are a lot of men whistling to it

as they piss and wash their hands

back in the travel store people are in lines

paying for gas and buying cigarettes and snuff

i grab two bottles of unregulated water

owned by pepsi or coke

found in springs from out in drought-torn california

the country song is still playing

about high school proms and open arms on country farms

everyone in the love’s travel stop is white

except for one black dude

he’s wearing a blue chip in his ear

he’s got a big backpack on and is sweating profusely

he keeps asking everyone coming in and going out

how hot they think it is outside

i tell him it’s ninety

he says, it can’t be, it just can’t be

and starts pacing around the store cursing

i think maybe i should start getting worried about this

with the way things are going in america

but then it hits me that black people don’t usually kill in bulk

the way us white people do

so i smile at the cashier who calls me honey

pay for my gas and the water

start singing the country song

in the same disney voice as the singer on the radio

go outside and drop fifteen fracking dollars into the tank

along with every other picture postcard yankee

blessed to be living here in one nation under god