Red

Blue interstate signs
pointing this way and that—
all directions out of the 
mangled twilight
prowling the roads of Detroit
and St. Louis.
Slowly turning, slowly rotting,
slowly sucking into blue—

the colour of the kid
in the backseat of the family sedan
rolling sixty miles an hour
off the Jersey Turnpike
with a flat tire.
Belching blue smoke,
the enraged engine sparks
blue, struggling over the
drainage ditch, into a grove
of blue firs.

Blue skeletal hands in the one man
band endlessly screeching the blues
in a honky-tonk noise
from the putrid corpse of a player piano.
Hands reaching for the blue lemonade
between beats. Fry the mind
sink into the blue void
and wake in a blue gutter
under blue neon lights.

Blue, blue, blue
in the face of the man
pressed against grime
in the alley. A swirling 
of sweat as he blew his change
on the vagrant whore to satisfy blue balls 
lost in fixed rounds at the billiard hall

to the hustler, gently stroking the blue peacock
feather in his blue velvet fedora. Drinking
blue lemonade and smoking a stogie
to the sounds of Miles’ blue trumpet
streaming from a radio held tight
with blue duct tape.

At Wonderland the raver’s wife
stood beside the T-Station
where the Blue Line ends.
Legs spread wide holding a sign
reading “No Turns,”
shouting to the blue, smoky air
of the blue Revere night. Five miles away
a man caressed his lover, discarding
his blue retail name tag as he eased 
onto the mattress. Leisurely fingering
his blue steel mistress 
in a final ejaculation of
potassium sulphate.

Change here for the Red Line.

© 2009 by Mike R. Smale. All rights reserved.