Blue Highways

by William Sovern




for every hung-out-to-dry artist or poet the road trip is permanently etched in their everloving psychosis of the individual as free
                                                                 spirit

highway 41

a north/south artery snakes its way from Key West to northern Wisconsin
where one pitch black night I shared the middle of a naked corn field with a nude
scarecrow the aurora borealis stretched out against the sky

someone once said the test of true friendship is a 200 mile trip with the radio off
sculptured steel con artists & hip huckster poets have been my companions on this
worn out road eating conversation like 50 cent candy bars beyond each gentle thigh of
curve Technicolor road kill pulsating on the blue collar horizons truck stops framed like
oversized Hopper paintings

it is 4:00 am
it is dark
the headlights
lead I follow the
electric guitar man
is fast asleep in
the passenger seat
somewhere out there
in the dark lies
Minnesota

I am on my way to read poetry to a collection of people I have never met
I will do anything as long as I get to embarrass myself it has become
         ritual

daybreak
St Paul
Minneapolis
another cup of tea
good morning Minnetonka

which poet will show up this time

the mad poet
the comic relief poet
the brooding poet
the beat poet
the poet as metaphor
i have come
to pay homage
to the grand Buddha
poet of the north
the grand Buddha poets mantra reads
poetry is show business
so break a leg
slap the tambourine
the harmonica
man rules

jimmy the guitar man made noise
the French Surrealists made noise
the grand Buddha poet will make noise
the Mennonite woman walking alone
in her garden wants to make noise
I will perform a quiet
beat rhapsody







©2001 by William Sovern




William Sovern has promoted over 200 poetry readings in the last fifteen years in the Evansville, Indiana area. He is currently the host of the Tuesday Night Reading Series at the Jungle Restaurant & Fat Cats Bar in Evansville, which includes local, regional & national poets. He is the founder of the poetry performance group, Shakespeare's Monkey. which has performed in New York this year at CBGB's, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's, and at the Nuyorican Poetry café.


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