Airborne JellyFish.

Airborne JellyFish,

or;

What Burnouts Have Taught Me About The Odyssey

There is something heroic,

brave,

pure almost,

Odyssean maybe,

about setting off

across vast

and endless distances

in a shitty car.

Early 2000 Hyundais

all have the same

paint problem,

as if all

attacked by

saltwater-dripping,

laser-wielding

airborne jellyfish.

They all look battle-scarred

and,

of course,

they are

because only

the very poorest

of people

drive them.

My once

father-in-law

once pointed

to my tires

and explained

that steel cord there

wound tight beneath thin rubber,

you’re not supposed to be able to see it.

I think of him often

when I fill my tires

at gas stations,

something non-poverty people never do.

The jut-jut-jut-jut-jut

of 75 cent air pump

reminding you

your tires leak because you’re poor.

The siren song

of distant edges

of endless distances

means more

when you can’t afford to get there

because

the horizon remains

always a promised land.

I’ve never arrived

at Ellis Island

in damp peacoat

throbbing from

marketing majesty

that is

Lady Liberty,

but I Imagine

that deliverance

is similar to  

driving to

shit job

while considering

kamikaze-ing

Hyundai into concrete

and rebar divider.

Many of my friends now are young women

- attribute no meaning to this -

they’re always high

on Taylor Swift and

know Miley Cyrus

in place of

Gloria Steinem

and they ask me:

- always while I’m drinking,

I don’t know why,

maybe I’m always drinking

or maybe they’re always asking,

or maybe I just drink and imagine them -

why I’m friends

with the obvious meth addicts

in our building,

or the 7-11 homeless guy

who looks - to me -

like Agamemnon.

I’ve never properly

been able to

articulate

kinship I feel

to burn-outs.

Allegiance always

to triple-shift ephedrine waiters,

cocaine-awake bartenders,

slim white shirt hostesses with

cobweb ballet dreams

and a fifth of flavored vodka

split with the busboy

who wants to fuck her.

I wanta save them all

because I know them all

or,

shades of them.

I want,

like from Dunkirk

to save them all

when they need saving most.

I have actually - no shit actually -

seen the best minds

of my generation

destroyed

by poverty;

starving,

hysterical,

naked,

without the privilege

of Columbia.

Drinking Popov

to death,

raising two little girls

on Jack-in-the-Box wages,

feeding families off-brand Chef Boyardee,

97 cents a can from the 99 Cent Store.

Angelheaded hipsters

weren’t never

nothen’ but

white middle-class college kids.

Hippies weren’t never idealists,

just youthful fuck-drunk narcissists,

charred draft cards,

parents’ homes to go home to.

I’m angry.

I’m angry,

feel betrayed

by Kerouac

and Ginsberg,

I’m angry at

Steinbeck and Hemingway,

Carver and S. Thompson

They prepared us none

for Buzzfeed,

encouraged us not

to learn to code.

The starry dynamo of the night

turns out

was just a billboard

for The American Century.

Promised us

wordy greatness

in perfectly typeset letters

inked

on inside bend

of elbows, knees,

pretty drugs,

and trim thighs,

but now

we recognize

how white grace easy arrogant

it was

to be

a superpower, and

it benefit even

counterculture revolutionaries,

when 1946 we were

only earth nation

still able to mass-produce a car

or steel widgets

or plastic red cups

or perfectly throbbing dildos

or electrified nipple clips

or pink atom bombs.

Electric kool-aid acid test my ass.

Self-fellatio as good as vomitoriums.

Those who do not

study history are doomed

to remix it

and so we EDM.

I want a Tickle-Me-Elmo

Jimmy Carter doll.

I want the roof beams

of the White House

to ache

with the weight

of solar panels

like used doublewides do

with spent

Direct TV dishes.

Don’t want

a tax break.

I want

a guillotine

on a carnival float,

and police-free hours

on Park Avenue,

on Wall Street.

Bob Dylan sold

100 million records,

been a celebrity

since he was 22:

proto-One-Direction.

Mick Jagger is 72 years old.

Paul McCartney is a billionaire

and then some.

Hendrix had the decency to die.

And Hamlet, god love him.

And Neal Cassady.

Biggie, John Lennon, Keith Haring, Basquiat, Jeff Buckley, Warhol, Jim Morrison,

Janis Joplin,

Jesus, Django Reinhardt, Kurt Cobain, Virginia Woolf, Robert Johnson, Tupac, Brian Jones, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Sylvia Plath and Tyler Durden.

Not to venerate suicide,

I just wanta

drive my Hyundai

endless distances

powered by sunlight

and citrus,

and hope without

a barcode.

I want a pod for escape

from the bullshit

of ever being hungry

in this county.

Can you even believe

any of us go hungry

in this country,

which is made

mostly of donuts?

I want

one grenade

each

for one engine

each

of each G6

at Las Vegas airport

for a UFC fight.

From the day he left

to the day

he saw Penelope again,

it took Odysseus

twenty years.

Google Maps says

you can drive it

in 13 hours.

Gotta wonder

did he really

even wanta get home?

Or just

live in the distances?

Unencumbered,

ignore new Rolling Stones albums

or movies about the Beats.

Or did he

just wanta kill some cyclops,

fuck Circe on her knees,

drive the interstates,

Mushrooms at KOAs

and group sex in hostels?

Did he just wanta drive his Hyundai into the sea

instead of the median?

Or did he

just wanta go

until the tires gave out

and marooned him

on a HitchBOT highway shoulder

with nothing left

but whatever the fuck

stretched before him?

.

.

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