a still night,

a midnight blue

highway,

a straightjacket railroadtrack.

car and driver settle into wind rushes,

loops of road passage,

distant time tunnels,

home somewhere out there.

a still night,

a midnight blue

highway,

a drunken noho bar,

a drunken car,

a driver falls off to sleep

fighting sleep,

a prisoner marching off to the gallows

submitting this night will be gone forever.

holding onto consciousness

drunken driver slips away,

rapidly dreaming

he and car moving together,

lovers gone mad,

highway straightjacket railroad,

dreaming of eternal sleep

resolutely haunting the irrational,

driver and car racing out of control

now lost in the space of the streets,

waking up to terror,

machine and man moving together in sleep,

the rushing wind ahead

loops of road passage

now out of control.

and at dawn they finally enter the awaiting time tunnel, signaling

the approach of death and its yellow mountains,

their only alternative.

NYC

1984