road hum
car noise
a hotel room banking the freeway
a car parked out front
a dilapidated outpost
never a great destination
only a tiny dutsy stop alongside
a passage to greater things
lizards scramble searching for breakfast
across the lot
A man sips stale coffee, watching a velvet Elvis
through his window yellow portals of gargoyles seep through royal arches
guarding hamburgers of paradise where millions, no
billions, are served
to whom?
who collects these hungry souls, and their chicken nuggets
and family meals
and who doles out plastic toys of smelted dreams
dangling attention moments empty of nutrition
tossing roadside offerings to lizards who nudge it aside to look for living things
scurrying dirt and rock
amidst towering things of tiny consequence and whole worlds spin
and move and cross round invisible to concerns
of larger spheres. So many charts and gravitations!
whirls and crescentations and heliocentric orbitations
circling the most mundane
enveloping the most amazing
hardly even matters a difference
between arcs and jolts of attention
currencies of denomination
paying tithes
to the new church
of latter day mediocrity