142. ‘Four Wheels and a Full Tank’: A Medatitive Poem by Duff McKagan, Aged 29.

There is no end
to the road
there is no friend
to be found out here
on the road
only ghosts
of nights gone by
no Kerouac voyage
of kicks and discovery
only weak coffee
white lines
of all types
and road-side signs
advertising
museums for the
world’s biggest pencil
and the world’s oldest
waffle house

This is America.
This is the American Dream:
four wheels, a full tank
and the freedom to be;
only the dream is
endless and boring
and nothing happens here
nothing but
endless movement,
a mass displacement
of isolated individuals
we are reduced
to crossed paths and
missed connections -
I mean
what use is this dream
if you can
never wake from it?

It’s hard not
to see the truth
when you’ve broken
from your moorings
and find yourself adrift
on the tide of fortune -
moving, always moving
yet still never more
than 93 million miles
from the sun.
We labour under the
illusion that we
are moving forward
yet we can only
ever circulate this orb
like ants on a
bored kid’s soccer ball
wilting in the sun.