madness america madness

madness! these steel cages
billion dollar bumper car
economy in the parking
lot xanax-addled drivers clenching
wheels of fortune careening
from one self-inflicted sorrow
to the next, madness!
a thousand dollars worth of hair
sitting on the rictus grin
of 21st century doom------
men in stupors enlivened
only by the hope of rage
the invocation of the fetish
object underneath their seat-----
women fat with corn syrup
smashing grills on car-bomb pylons
guarding warehouse bunkers filled
with goods we're dying for-----
madness! a life that won't sustain
a chain reactor cracking
underneath the hood,
your body, alien, huge, swaddled
in dollar bills, forgetful of love,
of poetry, of tenderness,
of quietude, of gentleness,
your body metastasizing
as another engine of america
explodes.