Local Enterprise

How many wrecks can you sell from the driveway
or the front yard -- before the neighbors
tell you quit -- how many sportsthings or sedans --
decently patched and sprayed --
how many credit aps scratch out -- for kids let down
by whispering -- thinking themselves
some throb -- and no harm satisfied -- as if
it were stones alone that played their tricks
on cornering? A weekend in Time’s made up
in plastic stars and touring wheels
/ a weekend in minds made up -- designing complaints
against the stacks / against this red men swear
they’ve never seen the likes of -- and ten dollar suits --
crisp pressed -- to the far side of fashionable.
You’re glad for the chill some nights -- glad for the green
and seventy -- for the looks of kids -- renewed
in an old contest -- because it’s the weekend after all --
arranged in the skirts and deafening comics
and tiered lighting -- these cameras about as busy
as the close stars get. By then they’ll have
sensed the jugular -- forgetting the driveway spills --
the bondo / bakes and cross-styled harmonics --
the credit risks -- signing their lives on anything --
as if a machine -- restored -- might redesign
the universe -- as if a whim so / a strategy so cauterized
relaxed the heart to industry / the will to miscreate --
and was and is -- obsessing the speed-minded
and phrase-starved -- a silhouette
yard-company -- decided the meats they’ll serve up
Sundays at the brink -- gossiping skirts
and quoting half-time comics sneaking sips. Hadn’t
the sales / skids / the soaped lines --
spelling prices out -- and the dump crews -- cursing
the farm pups / the ends of wild things -- hosing
what’s left to the brief green green and afterwards --
the music been good enough for you -- hearing
the scoped joints roaring through some lifetimes --
draped in these steam-pressed threads --
fit enough for smiling? Except for the mirrored floors
and post-football heroics -- what’s there to say
for all of it -- except for the tiered lights -- winking
away or out -- what’s to be said for fall --
for the desires / ranks -- for this rain blown off --
over the stadium seats and novelty post-boxes --
over the graves on the hill routes -- into the sheds
drawn down by seasons as they passed -- into
the face of jack -- springing to light in an old costume --
about as funny as this gets -- given the costs
and over-runs / the tracks and product spirals
/ the leaves -- as they rain off mullberries --
littering the tracked sponge lawn -- tracks left by wrecks
you’d turned on an initial -- by the wrecks
no one in his worst dreams was purchasing. Hadn’t
you thought straight out -- and one more way
of making it? But nothing surprises anymore. And
you -- in no flat way confederate -- imagine
the dreams chased west -- to the high plains or Indiana --
the boxes of dreams men leave -- windows broken in --
wide to the moonlight’s now -- or anybody’s salvage.
Why wouldn’t the moving lights / the
tresseled lights / the cold explain this company --
the sagas they sprayed on stone / the curses
they sprayed against the state -- against
the corporate planners -- sporting
their corporate meals underbelt -- and
nothing themselves maybe -- in
no flat way confederate -- mistaking
for their own
old songs the planners never
had the hearts for?