Hitching Rides with Indiana Boys

a homage to Kurt Vonnegut, and John Mellencamp

The novelty of leaving
your mark on highways
never loses its tread
with a house of five
returning to points
of destination.

Castrophies in cornfields
are the revving of children,
slaughtering wind.
It is a full song
that can only be harvested
when you are born in Indiana.

They tried to wheel
down our rows, leaving nothing 

but exhaust in the motor of our youth.
Sifting through this bounty
was just our way
of getting a leg up.
"Yeah and so it goes "

Stopping clocks,
to rock with a natural engine
was our joke on Illium idiots,
who hadn't realized yet
Jesus was just a bum,
like us, walking tall .

And it's all
a spoonful of syrup
waiting for you to swallow
between a laugh, and a tear.
Yeah I can still hear
the bombed out Zoo,
when I had a cage of my own.
That was so many
Pink Houses ago.

" Ya know ? "

But pilgrimages are never wrong,
when hitching rides
with Indiana boys,
and a bottle of Beam...
as we flipped birds
at that old Dresden moon.

Reviews

[An Open Venue]

Makes me laugh; remembering "Beam" and mowing down corn fields in a Coronet 500. It has been a long time sense I thought of that :) Reckless but fun. Days when guns where for target practice and maybe a squirrel or two.

I like the language and found the interjections easy to follow.

this was fun
thanks :)

Ven

[W.k.kortas]

I found the tacking-on of the Vonnegut reference to Dresden at the end a bit disconcerting; in my view, it just didn't quite fit. Still, that's a fairly minor complaint with a solid piece of writing. It has a little grit, but isn't bitter or threatening to descend into rant, and it's reflective without weepy nostalgia.