On the Road
They drove the car
as if they hadn’t boosted it
from the driveway of some
mansion they’d knocked over,
drove as if the trunk wasn’t
full of top shelf stuff they could
pawn for pennies on someone
else’s dollars, as if there weren’t
designer bags stuffed with
watches, earrings, necklaces,
jewelry, no questions asked,
almost untraceable goodies
guys would buy for cash
and a “thanks for coming in
suckers, good luck getting away
with this”, smile, drove as if
they could go forever, top down,
wind in their hair, three hundred
dollar sunglasses wrapped around
pin pricked eyes, so high they
almost didn’t need a vehicle
to contain them, to take them to
rainbow’s end wherever that was.
Exterminating Angels
Once they had been someone’s
little girls, off to college in preppie
clothes and jeans, who were,
by junior year looked as if she’d
been kidnapped by Rastafarians
who braided her white gold waist
length hair into dreds, clothed
them all in Marley, t-shirts, no bras
allowed, and distressed jeans so torn,
the fabric was more for display
purposes than as clothing.
All of them acquired eyebrow
and nose rings, diamond studs
where the rings weren’t, ear piercings
and bad tattoos, lots of them, everywhere.
If the punk band they formed had a
permanent name it would be:
Exterminating Angels and the one
chord they could play would be backed
by a Ziggy Stardust refugee/drummer
on speed, a blind keyboardist, and
a sax player who had won an Andre
the Giant lookalike contest.
Their voices amid all that cacophony
was an evil shriek that electrified
crowds, leaving them cold as graveyard
crypt art on a foggy night, their black
angel wings enfolding where those
listening were standing, stiff in a drug
induced haze, in damp overhead lit
spotlights, in cellar bars with no windows,
no in case of fire exits, no ventilation,
just a small portion of hell’s half acre
to lie down in.
