Route 18

ROUTE 18
Elizabeth said last night the lake roared like the ocean;
I was landlocked under the orange-white solstice moon.
Imagine: imagining a place meant to conjure up another.
Three degrees of hometown disconnect in my unborn daughter's room.
Take the 18 bus past the place my grandfather grew up before he got out,
and met a pretty Swede from the Bible college choir and left his
sister wearing saddle shoes in the care of the county,
with her forehead covered in electrode glue, as to not disturb the wires.
Mistakes were made. Grind it out: I can see the edges- the parts where
the ends start hemorrhaging time and leaking love.
Playing wounded so well, we fell like warm breath cooled.
A class ring on a chain the plastic jewel fell out of.
Got your ghost ghouling all over Milwaukee haunting the homes
and factories of captains of dead industries.
I've been no place with the capacity to hoard shame like us,
in the warehouses possessed and left unsold by the city.
I was 20 in September in the Windexed dirty book store. the
cathode-green skinscreens interrupted by the news.
Those fuckers stole my story--my manifest narrative: my
connection and my star-spangled nudes. Jimmer drew a minty
Kool and a nine volt battery and a pubic pile of grey steel wool
from his jacket on the balcony He said we fucked up but
won't admit it, due to endless imperial vanity.