We had wanted to leave our homes before six in the morning
but left late and lazy at ten or ten-thirty with hurried smirks
and heads turned to the road, West
driving out against the noonward horizon
and visions before us of the great up-and-over

and tired we were already of stiff-armed driving neurotics in Montreal
and monstrous foreheaded yellow bus drivers
ugly children with long middle fingers
and tired we were of breaking and being yelled at by beardless bums
but thought about the beards at home we loved
and gave a smile and a wave nonetheless

Who were sick and tired of driving by nine
but then had four more hours still
with half a tank
then a third of a tank
then a quarter of a tank
then no tank at all
except for the great artillery halt and discovery
of our tyre having only three quarters of its bolts

Saved by the local sobriety
and the mystic conscious kindness of the wise and the elderly
and the strangers: Autoshop Gale with her discount familiar kindness;
Hilda making ready supper and Ray like I’ve known you for years
that offered me tools whose functions I’ve never known
and a handshake goodbye

     and "yes we will say hello to your son in Alberta"
     and "yes we will continue safely"
     and "no you won’t see us in tomorrow’s paper"
     and tired I was of hearing about us in tomorrow’s paper

Who ended up on a road laughing deliverance
in Ralphton, a small town hunting lodge
full of flapjacks and a choir of chainsaws
with cheap tomato juice and eggs
but the four of us ended up paying for eight anyway

and these wooden alley cats were nothing but hounds
and the backwoods is where you’d find a cheap child's banjo
and cheap leather shoes and bear traps and rat traps
and the kinds of things you’d fall into face first

Who sauntered into a cafe in Massey
that just opened up two weeks previous
where the food was warm and made from home
and the owner who swore to high heaven
and piled her Sci-Fi collection to the ceiling
in forms of books and VHS

but Massey herself was drowned in a small town
where there was little history and heavy mist
and the museum was closed for renovations
and the stores were run by diplomats
or sleezebag no-cats
and there was one man who wouldn’t show us a room
because his baby sitter hadn’t come yet
but the babysitter showed up through the backdoor within seconds
though I hadn't seen another face

        and the room was a landfill
        and smelled of stale cat **** anyhow
        and the lobby stacked to the ceiling with empty beer box cans bottles
        and the taps ran cold yellow and hot black through spigots

but we would be staying down the street
at the inn of an East-Indian couple

who’s eyes were not dilated 
and the room smelled
lemon-scented

and kept on driving lovingly without a care in the world
but only one of us had his arms around a girl
and how lonely I felt driving with Jacob
in the fog of the Agawa pass;

following twin red eyes down a steep void mass
where the birch trees have no heads
and the marshes pool under the jagged foothills
that climb from the water above their necks

that form great behemoths
with great voices bellowing and faces chiselled hard looking down
and my own face turned upward toward the rain

Wheels turning on a black asphalt river running uphill around great Superior
that is the ocean that isn’t the ocean but is as big as the sea
and the cloud banks dig deep and terrible walls

and the sky ends five times before night truly falls
and the sun sets slower here than anywhere
but the sky was only two miles high and ten long anyway

The empty train tracks that seldom run
and some rails have been lifted out
with a handful of spikes that now lay dormant

and the hill sides start to resemble *******
or faces or the slow curving back of some great whale

-and those, who were finally stranded at four pumps
with none but the professional Jacob reading great biblical instructions at the nozzle
nowhere at midnight in a town surrounded

by moose roads
                             moose lanes
                                                     moose rivers
and everything mooses

ending up sleeping in the maw of a great white wolf inn
run by Julf or Wolf or John but was German nonetheless

and woke up with radios armed
and arms full
and coffee up to the teeth
with teeth chattering
and I swear to God I saw snowy peaks
but those came to me in waking dream:

"Mountains dressed in white canvas
gowns and me who placed
my hands upon their *******
that filled the sky"

Passing through a buffet of inns and motels
and spending our time unpacking and repacking
and talking about drinking and cheap sandwiches
but me not having a drink in eight days

and in one professional inn we received a professional scamming
and no we would not be staying here again
and what would a trip across the country be like
if there wasn’t one final royal scamming to be had

and dreams start to return to me from years of dreamless sleep:

and I dream of hers back home
and ribbons in a raven black lattice of hair
and Cassadaic exploits with soft but honest words

and being on time with the trains across the plains  
and the moon with a shower of prairie blonde
and one of my father with kind words
and my mother on a bicycle reassuring my every decision

Passing eventually through great plains of vast nothingness
but was disappointed in seeing that I could see
and that the rumours were false
and that nothingness really had a population
and that the great flat land has bumps and curves and etchings and textures too

beautiful bright golden yellow like sprawling fingers
white knuckled ablaze reaching up toward the sun
that in this world had only one sky that lasted a thousand years

and prairie driving lasts no more than a mountain peak
and points of ember that softly sigh with the one breath
of our cars windows that rushes by with gratitude for your smile

And who was caught up with the madness in the air
with big foaming cigarettes in mouths
who dragged and stuffed down those rolling fumes endlessly
while St. Jacob sang at the way stations and billboards and the radio
which was turned off

and me myself and I running our mouth like the coughing engine
chasing a highway babe known as the Lady Valkyrie out from Winnipeg
all the way to Saskatoon driving all day without ever slowing down
and eating up all our gas like pez and finally catching her;

      Valkyrie who taught me to drive fast
      and hovering 175 in slipstreams
      and flowing behind her like a great ghost Cassady ******* in dreamland Nebraska
      only 10 highway crossings counted from home.

Lady Valkyrie who took me West.
Lady Valkyrie who burst my wings into flame as I drew a close with the sun.
Lady Valkyrie who had me howl at slender moon;

     who formed as a snowflake
     in the light on the street
     and was gone by morning
     before I asked her name

and how are we?
and how many?

Even with old Tom devil singing stereo
and riding shotgun the entire trip from day one
singing about his pony, and his own personal flophouse circus,
and what was he building in there?

There is a fair amount of us here in these cars.
Finally at light’s end finding acquiescence in all things
and meeting with her eye one last time; flashed her a wink and there I was, gone.
Down the final highway crossing blowing wind and fancy and mouth puttering off
roaring laughter into the distance like some tremendous Phoenix.

Goodnight Lady Valkyrie.

The evening descends and turns into a sandwich hysteria
as we find ourselves riding between cities of transports
and that one mad man that passed us speeding crazy
and almost hit head-on with Him flowing East

and passed more and more until he was head of the line
but me driving mad lunacy followed his tail to the bumper
passing fifteen trucks total to find our other car
and felt the great turbine pull of acceleration that was not mine

mad-stacked behind two great beasts
and everyone thought us moon-crazy; Biblical Jake
and Mad Hair Me driving a thousand
eschewing great gusts of wind speed flying

Smashing into the great ephedrine sunset haze of Saskatoon
and hungry for food stuffed with the thoughts of bedsheets
off the highway immediately into the rotting liver of dark downtown
but was greeted by an open Hertz garage
with a five-piece fanfare brass barrage
William Tell and a Debussy Reverie
and found our way to bedsheets most comfortably

Driving out of Saskatoon feeling distance behind me.
Finding nothing but the dead and hollow corpses of roadside ventures;

more carcasses than cars
and one as big as a moose
and one as big as a bear
and no hairier

and driving out of sunshine plain reading comic book strip billboards
and trees start to build up momentum
and remembering our secret fungi in the glove compartment
that we drove three thousand kilometres without remembering

and we had a "Jesus Jacob, put it away brother"
and went screaming blinded by smoke and paranoia
and three swerves got us right
and we hugged the holy white line until twilight

And driving until the night again takes me foremast
and knows my secret fear in her *****
as the road turns into a lucid *** black and makes me dizzy
and every shadow is a moose and a wildcat and a billy goat
and some other car

and I find myself driving faster up this great slanderous waterfall until I meet eye
with another at a thousand feet horizontal

then two eyes

then a thousand wide-eyed peaks stretching faces upturned to the celestial black
with clouds laid flat as if some angel were sleeping ******* on a smokestack
and the mountains make themselves clear to me after waiting a lifetime for a glimpse
then they shy away behind some old lamppost and I don’t see them until tomorrow

and even tomorrow brings a greater distance with the sunlight dividing stone like 'The Ancient of Days'
and moving forward puts all into perspective

while false cabins give way
and the gas stations give way
and the last lamppost gives way
and its only distance now that will make you true
and make your peaks come alive

Like a bullrush, great grey slopes leap forth as if branded by fire
then the first peaks take me by surprise
and I’m told that these are nothing but children to their parents
and the roads curve into a gentle valley
and we’re in the feeding zone

behind the gates of some great geological zoo
watching these lumbering beasts
finishing up some great tribal *******
because tomorrow they will be shrunk
and tomorrow ever-after smaller

Nonetheless, breathless in turn I became
it began snowing and the pines took on a different shape
and the mountains became covered white
and great glaciers could be seen creeping
and tourists seen gawking at waterfalls and waterfowls
and fowl play between two stones a thousand miles high

climbing these Jasper slopes flying against wind and stone
and every creak lets out its gentle tone and soft moans
as these tyres rub flat against your back
your ancient skin your rock-hard bones

and this peak is that peak and it’s this one too
and that’s Temple, and that’s Whistler
and that’s Glasgow and that’s Whistler again
and those are the Three Sisters with ******* ablaze

and soft glowing haze your sun sets again among your peaks
and we wonder how all these caves formed
and marvelled at what the flood brought to your feet
as roads lay wasted by the roadside

in the epiphany of 3:00am realizing
that great Alta's straights and highway crossings
are formed in torturous mess from mines of 'Mt. Bleed'
and broken ribs and liver of crushed mountain passes
and the grey stones taxidermied and peeled off
and laid flat painted black and yellow;
the highways built from the insides
of the mountain shells

Who gave a “What now. New-Brunswick?”

and a “What now, Quebec, and Ontario, and Manitoba, and Saskatchewan";
**** fools clumsily dancing in the valleys; then the rolling hills; then the sea that was a lake
then the prairies and not yet the mountains;

running naked in formation with me at the lead
and running naked giving the finger to the moon
and the contrails, and every passing blur on the highway
dodging rocks, and sandbars
and the watchful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Law
and holes dug-up by prairie dogs
and watching with no music
as the family caravans drove on by

but drove off laughing every time until two got anxious for bed and slowed behind
while the rambling Jacob and I had to wait in the half-moon spectacle
of a black-tongue asphalt side-road hacking darts and watching for grizzlies
for the other two to finish up with their birthday *** exploits
though it was nobodies birthday

and then a timezone was between us
 and they were in the distant future
and nobodies birthday was in an hour from now

then everything was good
and everyone was satiated
then everything was a different time again
and I was running on no sleep or a lot of it
leaping backward in time every so often
like gaining a new day but losing space on the surface of your eye

but I stared up through curtains of starlight to mother moon
and wondered if you also stared
and was dumbfounded by the majesty of it all

and only one Caribou was seen the entire trip
and only one live animal, and some forsaken deer
and only a snake or a lonesome caterpillar could be seen crossing such highway straights
but the water more refreshing and brighter than steel
and glittered as if it were hiding some celestial gem
and great ravines and valleys flowed between everything
and I saw in my own eye prehistoric beasts roaming catastrophe upon these plains
but the peaks grew ever higher and I left the ground behind

Livin' easy
Lovin' free
Season ticket on a one way ride
Askin' nothin'
Leave me be
Takin' everythin' in my stride
Don't need reason
Don't need rhyme
Ain't nothin' that I'd rather do
Goin' down
Party time
My friends are gonna be there too
I'm on the highway to hell
On the highway to hell
Highway to hell
I'm on the highway to hell

No stop signs
Speed limit
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Like a wheel
Gonna spin it
Nobody's gonna mess me around
Hey satan
Payin' my dues
Playin' in a rockin' band
Hey mumma
Look at me
I'm on the way to the promised land
I'm on the highway to hell
Highway to hell
I'm on the highway to hell
Highway to hell
Don't stop me

We shall see the desert as the rose,
Walking in the King's highway;
There"ll be singing where salvation goes,
Walking in the king's highway,

We shall see the glory of the Lord,
Walking in the king's highway,
And behold the beauty of His Word,
Walking in the king's highway,

There the rain shall come upon the ground,
Walking in the king's highway,
And the springs of water will be found,
Walking in the king's highway,

There no rav'nous beast shall make afraid,
Walking in the king's highway,
For the purified the way is made,
Walking in the king's highway,

No unclean thing shall pass o'er here,
Walking in the king's highway,
But the ransom'd ones without a fear,
Walking in the king's highway,

She surrenders her joys
A-line highway what ploys
Per- day 2 B or not to Be
  B for breakaway
Windy- seaway everyday
endless living
Stay to the right tossing skirt


Gossip throwing unwanted dirt
Smoky bear mountain no harm
  Losing one valuable gift charm
   His name in honor
   feeling complete
  Highway for justice and absolute
   The right way

    Aroma apple pie putting on
       Your husbands
      Graphic artist highway- tie
      How many people on the highway

       Never to confess and lie
      Highway doesn't have any privacy
True saint of shrubbery mountain tops
       curved figure highways
    Reckless cliffs skirt ruffles love
      feeling rammed
       Turn of the century traffic jammed
  Your skirt flew up like wild goose chase

  You rather of went Big- City marathon
    bike race
By- way time -may be- silent have
nothing to say?
Performance piano Steinway
Skirt highway waving flag winning everyday*
Your skirt drenched rooftop concerts

Nest of Blue Jays no highway
Serenity sky draw the deviant
But words can heal even on a highway
My lips are sealed?

They like walking on the highway
Highways highways
But they push harder to be alive tommorow
They are usually criticized as insane boys
But they keep blowing side ways
Some of them are afraid of what might be insight while they're flyer than a flight
They love strolling on the highway
Highways highways
And they keep with passage ways
But they sometimes go where they want to
They like walking on the highway
Highways highways
But they push harder to be alive tommorow
They are usually criticized as insane boys
Insane boys insane boys
They want to live together
They think life is just a lousy freeway
Freeway freeway
They get ridiculed into the gangway
Later on they try to break away
But they went down the wrong pathway
The think life is a freeway
They like walking on the highway
Highways highways
They like walking on the highway
Highways highways
They like walking on the highway
Highways highways
They like walking on the highway
Highways highways
But will they survive tommorow?

What is Life?

Life is getting out of bed tired this morning, snailing to the bathroom, and finding out that my sister has left the top of the toothpaste ***** again. Life is drinking orange juice with that toothpaste taste still in my mouth.
Life is driving to school and missing the right ramp to get off of the highway.
It is cussing loudly in an empty car.

Life is coasting down the highway in between two huge, Moses-parting-the-red-sea, concrete walls.

It is reminiscing about magnificent popsicles from the ice cream man.
Life is realizing how ***** the ice cream man’s van really was.
Life is being that one kid whose dad bought him a pink bike at a garage sale.
Life is losing the reader before the poem even began.

Life is “Santa clause is real but not in the way you thought he was.”
Life is always being too obvious or being inscrutable.
Life is having a correct answer on a test then changing it.

I look out the window and see the night sky —millions of blinking glass shards on black pavement.
Life is craving to drive on that endless milky road instead of the road you are driving on to get to your school at three o’clock in the morning.
Life is driving an extra ten minutes because you missed that exit on the highway.
Life is the High School Cafeteria.
Life is your best friend who stabs you in the back.
No it’s not, life is like not having any best friend in the first place but telling your parents you do.
Life is arriving at school and entering through a pre-opened window in the dark then climbing through the vents in order to break into the math office to steal the semester exam answers.
Life is stopping - and turning back at the last minute and driving home to probably fail the test and class the next day.
Life is the divorce rate in America.
Life is the same boring start of a line over and over again.
Life is people politely nodding and saying “Yah” even if they couldn’t understand what you said.
Life is teens throwing handfuls of coins at each other’s (parents’) cars for fun at the stop light before getting on to the highway.
Life is the beggar watching them from the side of the street in the cold.

Life is not noticing that there are a lot of cars on the highway at this time of night.
Life is driving home at four o’clock in the morning.
Life is imagining your warm bed while you drive.
Life is breathing more slowly.
Life is the mellow rhythm of the highway humming underneath your wheels.
The music rocks on “Life is life, na na na na na.”
Life is soul-stirring music making you tired.
Life is a small brook bubbling silently through some far away woods.
Life is closing your eyes while driving for only three seconds.

I **** my eyes open just as sheets of heat from the air conditioning cover my body.

Life is the confidence that you can stay awake with your eyes shut for longer this time.
It is closing your eyes for 6 seconds. Then another 6 seconds.
Life is the reader knowing that you will close your eyes for 6 seconds a third time. It is them reading on excitedly.
Life is splattered all over the side of the highway.
Then life is the traffic flying past the spotless side of the highway the next day.

“What is life?”

Life is the disappointing last line of a poem.

On Peyote Highway

The lanes go this way and that
Purple haze sunset to the left
The radio changes itself

On Peyote Highway

The flowers all try to hitch rides
With thumbs held high in the sky
While cactus ride by on their bikes

On Peyote Highway

Rainbow clouds speak in foreign tongue
The Koala Bear next to you ***** his thumb
The clown on the hood chews Juicy Fruit gum

On Peyote Highway

Skeletons rattle their bones in the back
Constantly asking are we there yet
As mimes mouth hello from the ditch

On Peyote Highway

You travel in both space and time
Take the pedal off the metal of your mind
Set the scenery to always rewind

On Peyote Highway

Well I’ve lived a life just like yours
But I made some choices that were poor
So instead of having it my way
I’m selling flowers on the highway
I have a home but it moves around a lot
Maybe my rent’s the one thing I forgot
If I had my choice I’d dream by day
But for now I’m selling flowers on the highway
And somewhere, somehow, a man in a suit is burning sage
And somewhere, somehow, a woman in a dress is filled with rage
I’d like to tell them all to be proud, witty and gay
But instead I’m selling flowers on the highway
And these roads have an ego, about the size of a town
And the faceless people driving by, to me they look like clowns
Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I just need to feel okay
But for now, I’m stuck here, selling flowers on the highway
I’ve got hyacinths, marigolds and roses
I’ve got one cure for my neurosis
So pass me the bottle, if you may
I’m stuck here selling flowers on the highway
I just want to walk like I usually do
Beneath the tall buildings on the avenue
But for now I’ll bask in the sun’s rays
I’m just a human being, selling flowers on the highway

Reclining in their rocking chairs, the brothers Beau and Cletus gazed despondently out
Past the final farm toward the convergence of the worn highway
And the fritz horizon. Cows paused their chewing; an ashy sun
Obscured in incongruous fluffs of cloud; it grew
Greyishly chilly. "Shame the kids're movin'," Beau squeezed out before a deep belch. Cletus only
Mumbled, his voice lost in the light drizzle rapping on the milky sheet-plastic roof. The
          porch

Was unfurnished, save the chairs, one ashtray, and a novelty sign reading: "Get off my porch."
Cletus took a long, pensive drag off a cigarette before stubbing it out.
He coughed a raspy croak wetted with sixty-six years. Besides Cletus' sporadic coughs, the only
Distinguishable sound to be heard in Moody Creek wafted in from the highway:
Rattles of the day's final Spokane- or Boise-bound semi-trucks grew
Inaudible as Beau transiently  murmured, "Purtier than a string of fried trout, that there
          sun-

set." "Whaaa?" Cletus wheezed. "It's settin'," answered Beau, loosely gesturing at the sun.
Fractaled-orange-shafts webbing manifold shades of yellow – amber, belge, stil-de-grain – grew
Plumply stout upon the farmland, edged between properties and crumpled on the porch.
"I'll tell you what Beau – I'm glad they got out,"
Cletus uttered with assurance, his eyes scanning the reaches of light upon the highway.
Beau fixed his cap, musing over Cletus' words. He cleared his throat before beginning, "If
          only..."

Then stopped and itched his belly-button. Cletus turned to his brother. "I know one thang only
Beau: they'll do good in California. They'll be livin' high on the hog. Yer son n' my son
'll 'ave secure futures." Jack nodded somberly. He hated the highway.
He hated its ability to isolate everything. It had been his original revamp, the now-rickety porch,
His first project on his fixer-upper after marrying Dorothy West. They'd wed out
In his father's corn field; bought a house a mile or so down the road. Kids were born. Love
          grew,

And in its growing all things tangible and gorgeous – like tangrams piece together – grew:
The farm, the house, savings account and family. They ate hearty; drank canned beer only –
Living was smooth – but it changed when Dorothy took Little Dale and got out.
She wanted what the farm couldn't give or grow, leaving tiny Moody Creek with their son
As the last moon of May, 1955 went up. "*****!" Beau had yelled from the porch.
He'd woken to his Buick's rev and watched its taillights wane upon the
          highway.

And though he remarried, this was, in truth, mostly why Beau never squarely looked upon highway.
The light drizzle grew
Heavy, intensifying. "Gosh **** rain might near knock the coverin' off the porch!"
Hollered Beau. Cletus looked up and blew a cloud of thick grey smoke. "It's only
Rain Beau. No need gettin' ornery." That morning they'd seen off their youngest sons as the sun
Was just rising. One left to work for a dairy ******* in The Valley, the other went to figure
          out

Himself and his career. The porch shuddered. Beau absent-mindedly repeated "If only..."
Daylight died; black inked upon the highway. Cletus lit a new cigarette. Moody Creek grew
Dense, compacted by the darkness. The sun inched away. Cletus hacked and put his cigarette
          out.

They say life is a highway, I say it’s a battle.
I love to drive yet not one ounce of my being wishes to drive upon this highway any longer.
Battles tend to be fought with an army, yet here I stand alone.
Why do they force their essence into my being.
Why do they require physicality from me.
This is not something I wish to give.
Leave me be, and my body too.
The last thing I want is to smell your scent in through my skin.
I do not wish to taste the bitterness of your personality that you feel so kindly to force me to do.
If you want me to drive, let me drive.
But I refuse to drive anywhere near the highway which you built.
That highway is not made for my kind.
That highway is what turns beautiful souls into broken ones.
The filth in my bones is seeping out, overflowing into the street.
I try to wash this filth away.
Eye’s closed.
I do not wish to see this filth.
Just let it be gone already.
I am sick of fighting this battle.
I have had enough of fighting.
You have succeeding in consuming my entire being with the filth you forced upon me.
Buried deep.
So deep.
I never knew the deepness of myself, let alone the depths of my despair.
I never chose this.
Why should I have to live this.
Why should I have to keep my head up and carry on.
How does your head hang?
Between the ties of a noose?
It should.
Worthless.
Powerless.
Disgusting.
Damaged.
Numb.
That is what I feel.
Yet in reality it is what you are.
I know you don’t have power over me.
All this time I have been fighting.
This battle does not deserve to be fought.
You cannot hurt me.
I refuse to let the gravel of your highway slow me down or make me crash.
I will not crash.
Not for you, not for anyone.
It is my time to grasp the wheel.
I control my own vehicle, not you.
I will not allow you to climb into the driver’s seat.
You will not place your hands on, or anywhere near, my steering wheel.
The vehicle may seem broken, but it is not.
It just needed some TLC.
Push me again, I dare you.
Watch yourself be ran the **** over.
I will not wait.
I will not spare you.