Here's the 99th face of desire:
a parade of peacocked billboards
& el dorado motels.  Service & quest.
More of everything, & every light
year:  vacancy, vacancy, vacancy.

There's the Chinese dragon
& the dirty windows of Babylon.
Next the cleaners & card rooms,
the god-damned weary winch of hope.

I keep my eye on the leaded
horizon.  Cumulus, & the sky
funnels big at the end
of the strip.  I'm back
to my childhood Africa,
our car shooting like a bullet
through gold grasslands,
the wildebeest running,
stampeding by the thousands.
A natural urge on
& on & on.

Back here in the home of the lucky
dog, however, I see the expense
of long-stem roses.  How we ache
for what we don't have.  Longing,
& here's the cemetery
with its stock of souls --
a hill of green bones rising.
The end always in sight,
this road is a flight
of broken down cars,
beat-up hearts.  Look
how it lifts its shoulders
and reaches.  Everybody wants

a cheap rib dinner,
a broker, a game
of pool.  Dead or alive,
we all want that 
timid gun to hold.