It's not that I harbor a weeping willow
Shadow's worth of longing for those cloaked
  Turns and straight-aways, or that swampy
South Mississippi was ever half as tragic
  As I dreamed it could be, but that I still cruise
From time to time in the dope-ripe
  Ford Fairlane of the mind where nothing
Has changed, where we remain hopelessly
  Stoned devotees of the TOWN OF LEAKESVILLE
Emblazoned upon the graffitied water tower's
  Testimonies to love. We believed speed
Would save us, would take us fast
  And far away from the junkyard wrecks
Stacked in their mile-long convoy to nowhere.
  And though losing the way should
Have seemed the worst of divine betrayals,
  We took it as a minor fall from grace,
Tail-spun over the embankment rail, rocking
  That flung steel body down as if to play
A bar-chord on the barbed-wire fence.
  I'll never know what angelic overseer
Was bored and on duty that night, but we
  Rose up and climbed out of the warped last
Breath of that car, no one with so much
  As a scratch on his head, not a drop
Of beer spilt, and the radiator hissing
  Like a teapot in hell when someone yelled
She's gonna blow! and each of us standing
  There, starving for something more,
Something other than the back wheel
  Spinning that sudden dark, cricketed quiet.