If I don’t get out there soon I’ll die
Close as many roads as you like
I imagine one straight golden line
leading out to the coast through
leaning wheat stacked plains and closed
snow covered mountain passes,
trees taller than the buildings
sent to suffocate and teach me
to keep my head down, teach ya to ignore
the sky, walk on walk on walk on
searching aging dying calling
out into the sweet dark American night
that still smells sometimes like that
greasy sweat we used to know
and weren’t afraid enough to ignore, labor
sweat and poet’s sweat and jazz-man sweat that’d seeped into
the life blood of the continent unnoticed—
before it was paved and potted with
new factory blend soil and re-branded
old, meaningless, bygone and tired,
meant to be looked at out the periphery
of embarrassed eyes and dry throats.
Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia dreaming of the endless road ahead, carrying the idea of the fabled West in his heart. He maintains a poetry blog: amagicalmistake.blogspot.com. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally but he’d rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia’s old Skid Row.
Euphony Journal 