Exit 00 Poem by Tom Hamilton

Yeah
you've seen that movie,
Denim jacket, jean, muscular wrench cord boy
picks up Pink, tank, top too shy for eye shadow girl his
pick- up purrs with the pace of the river his
exhaust fumes foam with the trail of an airplane,
above cul-de-sac jobs and wife boxing slobs
above the height and width of letter box screens.

But the scenes that the drive-in didn't show us
bore the woe of those who stayed behind, to
watch dawn hatch from the slain yoke sky, with
eyes as faint and dry as flaking feces and
their faces fell again as the uncensored darkness
grieved on the pines as the light left their minds.

My girl used to sit in the window like a lamp.
As I watched encamped in the damp Dixie forest
As I watched more weeds cake the brier high May
until it grew thick as the strands in her hairbrush
until distant Arabians whinnied her name.

A sound reduced to engines as centuries ended, and
her house was as empty as a spent box of matches
as matching editions hit her porch early day
A paper which suddenly had the same date
from this fate on

The Pain

scratches like leaves across the soaked confetti
It litters the ground with unsound prayers
It plays dot to dot with rotted out memories
It leaves a flawed spot on a white dress of dreams
'till a thunderstorm swarms a melancholy tornado
and whips at the scald noon sewer like an enema
until the moon blooms, vacuumed in the hot, to
set in the jet sky like a rock in a sauna, to
bath the auld autos, those stalled bumper cars
still anticipating the carnival excitement of lightening
will lend them some form of condensed, controlled fire

Did I ever tell you how much I admired you
On any senseless night by the R.C. machine
where your hair had the wings of a Caribbean penny
as enticing and wet as the love in your mouth
When you headed South in your tea colored top, that
blouse with the spouse shoes, crushed used bottle tops
into the asphalt, each one, my heart thrown
into the glint of the Best Western Sun
Setting alone.