car crash simulation straight out of heaven 

and you, in the driver’s seat (Jesus take the wheel!)

i’m obsessed with elvis and she’s speeding a pink cadillac 

down marinated suburbia

feet dusty with indecision

her hair whipping my thighs

black-clad Patti with a white dove

hangs rosary beads from rear-view mirrors

at what point does a painted line

              down the middle

                make a road?

me, the attention-hungry hitchhiker 

turning a thumb down for no more rides 

i trace lines along forearms 

paving new roads, a route 66 with 

grass growing through the seam

humming old-man melodies and dressed

in tulips and antiquated film 

the pink cadillac parks at a gas station

the proverbial church for truck drivers and 

Springsteens

the old adage: 

crimson comes in threes

like the curve of your gibson

in the moonlight

the careening highway in desert darkness

the eroded canyon valley, itching for an echo

you’re very rockstar, you know

she screams and grips the steering wheel

the engine croons out one last rock tune

elvis eventually auctions off the cadillac in graceland

and new york city burns in the rising sun 

to be anything but this is impossible for us

(you whisper: memento mori!)

life betrays art, art betrays death

something like that

and i watch you do everything

magnificently, gorgeously, divinely—

will you do the same for me?