Out There Was America

I just realized that I haven't posted this one here yet. This is a poem inspired by and dedicated to my good friend Glenn Case, who was recently asked if he couldn't find anything better to do with his time than create art.


"Out There Was America"

On a long journey across the night of an America
I drove into the desert landscape and beheld
Elvis and Morrison, Hendrix and Dylan
In a ditch to the side of the road, with trash bags in their hands.
They seemed to whistle while they worked,
But the notes wafted into the night, not nearly fast enough to catch my speeding
Cadillac.

In the morning, I stopped into a diner.
With my breakfast and coffee,
I saw a newspaper that was guaranteed by the Andy Warhol himself
To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – so help him, God.
Didn't read it. Had to get back on the road

The desert went on forever, and in the oil fields
I saw Jackson Pollack, dancing next to a gusher,
Wearing a cheshire grin.
I smiled and waved at him, secure in the knowledge that I would have enough gas to get
Where I was going.

The announcer's voice blasted through my car's radio.
He said Poe’s real estate work had solved overpopulation and the housing crisis,
And that Emerson, Thoreau, Uncle Walt and Miss Em
Had soiled their hands growing enough crops to feed the entire continent of Africa.
I shut him off and bore my eyes down on the asphalt ahead.
Concentrate.

I passed a drive in theater on the left side of the road
And caught a glimpse of Scorsese and De Niro accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Someone told me, when I filled up my tank, that the award was for the fence they built
On the border.
I politely nodded and got back in my car.

Out there was America and I was going to find it.
Out there was industry and capital.
Out there was ingenuity and hard work.
Out there were my own bootstraps waiting for me to pull them up.
Out there was
America,
And I was going to find it fast.