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from _MILESTONES, SET 2 (1973 -1980)_ by Karl Young you drove from midnight till four I drove watching the dawn from four until six I slept from six until eight at eight in the morning the industrial valley begins feeding trucks to 35th street it doesn't really begin then it never stops I have never seen 35th street at eight in the morning (the only hour I haven't except in dreams) at eight in the morning the industrial valley begins feeding trucks to 35th street I slept from six until eight in there somewhere I dreamed of trucks on 35th street the road daylit after dawn and mists is full of trucks 600 miles from home this road comes from the industrial valley @ the bus stopped at the corner of Holton and Center I was behind it the light turned green and the cars on my left started moving -- a woman got off the bus and started to run across Holton she was hit by one of the cars that passed on my left she bounced off the grill and landed head first on the pavement -- the bus moved forward and I followed it seeing people gather around her hands to bloodmatted hair -- none of this looked real it seemed as though my windshield were a t.v. screen and all that I saw was something staged thousands of miles away by people who'd go home to supper just like me after they'd finished their acting -- the windshield and traffic isolated me perfectly from what had happened but the car is like a time capsule after a couple of hours I feel guilty about something I didn't do about something over which I had no control and about which I could have done nothing -- I could have been the driver who hit her if I had been in the other lane @ I've been crossing these railroad tracks for twenty years -- if you drive over them at normal speed they'll shake the teeth out of your head -- slowing to meet them is a reflex to me as it must be to this town's people who haven't done anything to change these tracks in twenty years /is that intentional do they leave them that way to make strangers slow down or to shake them up do kids watch in the tall grass to see outsiders bang their heads on their own rooves and brake in panic -- the town itself has changed considerably in twenty years the road's been repaved often enough -- maybe this village despite its changes has remained a small town perhaps the last one left in America -- the train stopped running a decade ago @ loss on the road is a common thing losing comes close to defining the road: the path through the thing you've left behind -- the Mackinac Bridge clearly set off Michigan's peninsulas -- crossing the state line into Wisconsin was imperceptible except for a sign -- since early childhood the cottage in Michigan has been something to leave but not to lose something to find again season after season a place of constant renewal a place that adapted itself to all life's changes a place to lose old selves as new ones emerged -- now that's over the cottage is sold I'll never see it again and this ritual drive around Lake Michigan is a way of acknowledging the road's power to take things away -- no material loss has ever been as bitter as this -- my notion of Paradise is Big Portage Lake as it was a decade ago before the motor boats came and filled the lake with gasoline before the state killed all the fish and restocked the water with nothing but trout before the speculators built the biggest trailer court in the state of Michigan around our land and forced us out after four years of fighting -- nothing will ever replace that place given to us by the road and its cars the same things that took it away -- the road will continue defining itself by the loss it extracts and our own willingness to play into its hands @ after a couple hours of Indian dancing -me moving forward Susan sideways - we drive through the cold of a midwestern night when winter has come without any snow -- how ancient this land is how quietly it whispers its long genealogy its story of winters /does the sound of the drum open your ears or the sound of feet moving together -- the car moves forward its route is circular I'm driving Susan's beside me earth tells its story the world is at peace @ the ship was carrying contraband timber from northern Wisconsin to a mill in Chicago when it sank in a storm nine decades ago -- cold mud preserved it until it was found a couple years back -- a few divers working in total darkness with little sense of which way was up or which way was back pumped out the mud brought the boat to the surface and towed it to port -- it took two divers to handle the wheel: one of them told us the original sailors must have used winches and ropes: no one man could master that wheel alone -- I couldn't help being amazed at how well this ship was built and designed how careful and accurate its shipwrights had been even when working on something as unimportant as this ship must have been -- I followed the beams through the hold some cut in one piece eighty feet long from whole trees -- Susan called from the galley as I counted spikes she wanted to show me the china and silverware the crew had used expensive ornate perhaps ostentatious -- the diver told us you wouldn't find better at a senator's table when this ship went under: the crew of four or five men criminals and outcasts living harsh and monotonous lives ate their beans on the most expensive plates they could buy at the time perhaps an amenity that made life easier or even pleasant a bit of luxury and elegance that let them feel like Kings of the Inland Seas -- we checked out their quarters just two wood bunks too small for comfort even for men five feet tall -- the car seems small as we imagine the lives of those sailors the storm and their cargoes and expands again as we fall silent in the sparkling sunlight of untraveled road -- /where are we now on our own dark ship /sailing contraband cargo that we're not aware of along the shores of the glittering lake /are we in the galley eating on fancy plates in the midst of a storm we see only dimly /are we the giants some future age will look at with awe and not understand /have we the strength to handle the wheel @ FOUND POEM FOR THE U.S. BICENTENIAL, JULY 4, 1976, FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON'S _NOTES ON VIRGINIA_ "from the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill -- it will not be necessary to resort at every moment to the people for support -- they will be forgotten and their rights disregarded they will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights -- the shackles which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war will remain on us long will be made heavier & heavier till our rights shall revive or expire in convulsion" @ _for Jackson Mac Low_ when we were here last summer the spice warehouse across the street smelled like a garden -- _un jardin_ would be more like it a prissy fussed over thing through which people dressed in silk walked formally couples holding elevated hands as if continuing a polite dance -- later it smelled like a barn full of hay after a long rain -- a barn off SoHo -- three days ago it smelled terrible like a chemical dump full of vicious effluent -- tonight slowly being lifted in the rickety elevator unlighted and open through the night air the air full of the infinite city a little drunk Susan falling asleep on my arm Jackson talking about Chicago in the '30s it smells like a garden again garden of a Calif garden of earthly delights framed in mysterious arches surrounded by corridors infinite as the city's streets pools reflect stars innumerable as city lights comets fall in the jasmines flowers distill themselves into incense -- the spices are brought from all over the world constantly change constantly produce new composite odors nasal poems generated by chance processes their scores are bills of lading /what will they suggest this winter where will trucks scatter the spices -- each grain will carry the magic of the poem they made together our car will follow the spice routes through darkest America @ _for Jerry & Diane Rothenberg_ this is the Borscht Belt the place where New Yorkers took their vacations before aeroplanes took them to Florida to California and Israel to Europe and Bali they moved whole neighborhoods into these hills husbands and fathers commuted from the city on weekends mothers and wives fought for groceries and cooking space played mah jong on rickety porches while watching small children sons and daughters picked up new tricks to rework into their city environment -- the playground of Jewish gangsters -not unlike Kenosha where I grew up which had been the bedroom and summer resort of Chicago's Mafiosi- the place where a generation of comedians served their apprenticeship and still rule under gentile names the humor of the nation back then they told the same jokes to tired garment workers who'd saved all year to get there to girls looking for romance to mothers looking for rich sons in law to jaded hoods who wanted noise around them while they cut deals enforced pecking order tried to burn the anxiety out of their throats with cheap vodka or imported scotch snapped the garters of strong-smelling nymphs to young business men beginning to feel their way through the recesses of American economics their fingers eager for the happy buck to worn out housewives recasting their lives in the glamor and power mimed in floor shows to boys learning the mystic code of honor and deceit to old people bewildered and wondering where life would drag them next -- the hotels and resorts have been converted to religious retreats and rehabilitation centers communes and ashrams we pass Talmudic scholars in gaberdines and earlocks discussing the mysteries of letters on spacious lawns their sons run along the road with earlocks puffy from swimming in chlorinated pools aging hippies try to farm naked in fields of stones ghosts with hollow eyes and cheeks stare at us through fences we pass women wearing wigs or scarves or nothing at all women wearing veils or hiding behind skin tanned to leather young men pass us in the hot-rods of the fifties or in cars that cost more than our houses legions of children and old people herded in and out of busses or marched along the road single file Hari Krishna dancers approach us in a town that contains no more than a gas station a bar and a couple of houses we drive through small towns that contain a few houses and as many pizza parlors delicatessens healthfood stores and icecream stands we drive through small towns owned by semidivine kings from Tibet or India or Korea or the deep south we drive through small towns no different from those back in the midwest fields full of cows antique farm houses glittering tractors -- I love to drive on unfamiliar backroads just to see whatever's there that's pleasant enough in Wisconsin or Michigan but this is a backroad driver's paradise the pure products of the whole world gone crazy in this strange place this vale of enchantment -- /if we stayed here for years could we figure out the maze of backroads the maze of faces we wander through now /would we search our hearts for freedom -- they feed into the great orange freeways of the imagination that link the positive and negative poles of our consciousness @ _for Toby & Miriam Olson_ my feet move over the pedals thinking of the pedals it seems I can feel them through my shoes the ribbed rubber of the clutch the two bumps of steel on the accelerator ribbed rubber again on the brake a little sand between the wales of the brake and clutch a shine on the high parts of the uncovered pedal -- when we were clamming out on the cape we walked slowly putting our weight onto our heels digging our heels into the sand moving them sideways as we pressed them down feet cool in the sand the sand yielding to the motion of heels a lightly twisting downward pressure into cooler and less yielding sand I didn't know how the clams would feel when I'd asked Toby he just said I'd know when I hit one so as I walked I tried to imagine what the clams would feel like like the hard coldness of a piece of the glacier that made the cape like the strange vegetative rocks you see in Islamic miniatures always just on the verge of turning into people or animals like the waxed and painted featherwork of Moctezoma's lost treasure like an embarasing or pleasant moment suddenly remembered like the pedals of the car now driving through the mountains the grade constantly changing as we move over it as I keep changing the pressure of my feet on the pedals passing and being passed by people with faces as blank as mine must be their feet searching like mine as I watch them pass watch trees and signs pass with them as buildings and pools go by as the road changes in front of us we search with our feet we don't know what for or what it'll feel like like the strange vegetative feel of millions of dollars like the cold assurance of complete authority like the shrill rush of absolute power like the calm release of pure serenity like the surge of prestige when we invent a new world like the feel of a clam under our toes @ a screw a screw a forced screw east on North Avenue to the ramp twist the groove continues down I ride the thread onto the freeway and on to the next ramp turn up continuing the same curve "___a cylinder grooved or threaded in an advancing spiral on its inner or outer surface a circular application of an inclined plain used to exert pressure or overcome resistance through a short distance___" freeway ramps hold down concrete beams that hold down the streets of the city our pressure on pavement holds it in place our use of the ramps keeps the screws tightly fastened we tighten the screws turning them down make them bite into the city I participate in the screwing of this city entering the freeway @ I drive through flat fields that wait for developers to sew them with concrete and steel past a condominium surrounded by an artificial lake and there on a hill rises the great mastaba of a shopping center -- a thing created by cars and making cars indispensable -- the garden of automobile the paradise of t.v. -- the stores inside it are minuscule -- televisions tell shoppers what they'll buy before they go in so varied selection isn't important -- the building contains hundreds of stores that create the illusion of choice a labyrinth of tiny cells in which we hide our lack of freedom -- potted trees and moving crowds skylights and vagrants armed guards and fountains mime a city where no one lives -- its brains are scattered all over its hinterland encapsulated in tubes -- I have driven along its nervous system and now I enter its hands its mouth its essence its soul the endless asphalt of its parking lot @ we wear our cars like jewelry -- when we drive we put on our wealth making our treasure expand around us farther than earrings lip plugs nose pendants cascades of armbands and necklaces making us bigger than featherwork or stretched skins -- the jewelry itself makes itself visible moves itself past more people and more other jewels than we could show off to dancing around a fire -- our jewels demand to be seen they carry us with them wherever the forcefields of wealth demand -- our jewels replace themselves and us when they get tarnished unless it is our lot to wear our poverty around us like jewels @ these cars have replaced the Nile boats that bound the Egyptians in Pharonic slavery the horses that conquered Europe and Asia allowed central governments to exploit large territories the horses that conquered both Americas subjected them to imperial rule -- these cars have replaced those horses and we ourselves have become part of them we don't need bands of horsemen to keep us enslaved we do it ourselves driving our cars we ourselves drive the vehicles of our oppression our cars control us tell us where to go what to do how to pay up our tribute money our bribes our wergeld our protection fees keep us laboring at the endless wheel the immense millstone that turns on tires make us think we're having fun make us feel our lives are free do you hear the scream of the iron chain each link a car sliding along its concrete housing @ when the sun set it was dark hearth fires candles lamps couldn't negate it just form islands in the same darkness pervasive outside -- the difference between inside and outside wasn't great a simple matter of walls -- outside there were stars like fires candles lamps everyone knew them knew their stories knew their seasons knew their progression -- the only time we know darkness is when we drive at night: the only time we see stars if we bother to look -- there is no darkness in movie theaters only luminous screens surrounded by nothing there is seldom darkness in our bedrooms when we turn out the lights we flee into sleep occasionally we find it at outdoor parties that go on at night but then we ignore it except for the atmosphere it lends to the party occasionally we find it when some frustration compels us to walk at night but then we're absorbed in our own private pain -- we only know darkness in our cars we only know isolation in our cars we only know detachment in our cars -- we only know ourselves a world we did not make when it invades our cars @ Credits and acknowledgements: The first poem in this group appeared in _Poetry Australia_ The second and fifteenth poems first appeared in _Hambone_ The third poem first appeared in _Printed Matter Japan The fourth and sixth poems first appeared in _World's Edge_ The fifth and twelfth poems first appeared in _Bullhead_ The thirteenth poem first appeared in _Midland Review_.