Driving Down Toward Florida

Fleeing a world that is cold,

because up North it is snowing on our

self-absorbed lovers who abandoned us

never realizing we would flee their wintry tongues.

Foregoing final acts of desperation

as we pass oasis after oasis.

Marking the outskirts of a civilization

full of highway bandits -

food machines and fuel fillups

where extortionate prices

are mixed with leering smiles.

And cheese sandwiches

are only white or yellow,

glistening moist and ominous.

In obscenely bright neon lights

glaring from service center islands

as if from a dentist's office,

eerily provoking pain from sharp steel probes.

Causing you to imagine whirring drills

with no sufficient anesthetic.

On the road passing little dwellings,

shacks really, made of rusted corrugated tin,

dented, pock-marked, where ghosts are seen

between breaths of intermittent rain.

In mile after torturous mile

of blackened rubber strips

from exploded truck tires -

which look like discarded alligators.

Flushed-out, abandoned presents

left to bake and sizzle without love

existing in the cooling snow of our yesterdays.

Dried-up carcasses cast

alongside swaying clumps of palm trees.

In whose leafy shadows hide strange lizards,

who it is said breathe from their eyes.

And we know we are getting closer,

far from frozen hearts.

We wish we could stop.