i-80

(August 2023. Driving Alice the Red Bus with Asher cross country, taking I-80 all the way from New York to SF. We wrote this collaborative poem together along the way in the daopoetry app; I believe we started it in Wyoming and finished it in Nevada, sitting on the roof of the bus enjoying the stars. In the poem we reminisce about a lot of highlights from the adventure. The second stanza is Asher’s. This is a great daopoem, and it’s worth mentioning that this is Asher’s first ever crack at collaborative poetry. The boy was in the cut.)

i-80

we are in the cut of the continent—
carving reality closer to revelation,
the rock rubbed by billions of rubber tires
a shape reified by collective reimagining,
an old canal of consciousness recreated ever
so slightly by the quantum friction of our
fresh crossing

we are in the cut of the continent—
flowing concrete beneath our feet,
continuously
Hurtling through intergalactic speedways,
we’ll be on our way to Pleiades.
While we play the game of life,
conceiving rules from a moose, a man named
Ted, and a screaming distant light.
And somewhere in the cosmically indifferent
difference between a beat down Thunderbird
and a red bus, I survive.

we are in the cut of the continent—
leaving a trail of selfhood across america
like the light lingering from perseid tears
or dazzling diamonds of white in the wake
of ducks waving through sunshine water
in hanging lake cradled in medicine bow
or the burning of a cigarette in silence
under the most quiet clear milky way
healing this continent stitch over green gray
stitch, a land of abundant waters worth
washing away all disconnection in cuyahoga
waterfalls & blue blessings of lake michigan
& hot springs open to all stories & struggles
& the new world promised in san francisco
where the ideals of dreamers are built in
materials of infinite alchemical muchness
which only asks to be touched by us
someday