A Short Poem From A Long Stretch Of Mexican Highway

In the first row of the bus
Always the first row
My girl likes to see
Something
No idea what
Or why

All I see is truck after truck
Schlepping shit up a dirty highway
North to the land of unending want
Spewing fumes into an already polluted landscape
Empty pallets going somewhere

Factories making who the fuck knows or cares
Half finished houses
No windows
Just openings with childrens’ faces
Staring into space
Not knowing but sensing
Something is very wrong with this picture

Men standing next to their cars,
Old and new
Dicks out of their pants
Peeing on the side of the road
Because peeing into a toilet is six
pesos these days
Just victims of inflation
I don’t know what the women do
I never see them squatting next to a truck

Blank billboards stand lonely on dry grass hills
With just telephone numbers
For someone, anyone, who wants to sell anything
To anybody
At anytime
Cheap advertising
Ineffective but cheap
Cheap but ineffective
You get what you pay for
Except when it comes to women

And slowing for the toll booths
Littered with taco stands
Starving dogs
Old men
Shuffling as they walk
Looking at the tortas
Hungry
But only looking
They have no money
No past
No future
No one cares
They will die alone

We all will

Now rounding a long curve
I draw deeply from a flask
My breath stops
A sign on the hillside
“Vivir es increible”

To live is incredible

Indeed
Incredible
Not to be forsaken
If only because
You can’t give up
What you never had

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