America Poem by Conor Dowd

America



Freefall leap into
a night American and blue
where neon signs shed fading light
into a neon sky or dawn,
where roads begin
and boundaries end,
another motel stop or inn,
so begin again at zero:
take a step and spin the wheel
and here or there your continent
creates your dream or fear.

While sudden bursts of music
from the jazz-infested bars
split midnight with their aftershocks
and shake or wake the drinking men,
cascading in their prairie eyes
to unlock secrets in the skies.

And somewhere clockwork days begin
but suddenly this city booms and howls
inside the madness of the night
where trucks go cruising
through the zigzag swellings
on the dusty roads,
the white line drunk and infinite
reels blindly to and fro
and everywhere the pictures
stare from billboards
and promise you your gold,
no telling where your dice may roll...

Or hitch a ride upon
the highways long and wide,
the child inside the man says never stop
as boxcars sweep you
to those points of no return
where you long to hold the future in your hands,
swing North or South or East or West
where the landscapes pole-to-pole can stretch
in patterns just for you.

And the place where cyclones shake the plains
can thrill
until the sky is sharp with electricity,
the compass points appear and disappear,
each day becomes the echo of the next.

And so a night goes on and on,
and a hemisphere can sleep
as a camera catches everything
somewhere in America.

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