mike mogel's Page

Children of America gather and stare
Burnt out diners cling desert air
Santa Fe Trail, rail and trucks
Cars colored rust chased by dust
Ripping at rhetoric revealing reality
Disquieting road resisting normality
Waldmire and Wallis poets we read
At one with the spirit regardless of speed.
Cracked pavement and pothole that challenge a ‘Vette
And rent-a-car drivers go faster and bet
That hubcaps won’t fly off if stored in the trunk
Passing Fords in the desert demolished and junk.
Here’s to the cafes and motels and kitch
The rental goes faster – “ain’t life a bitch.”

Santa Fe engines three or four
Two miles of train through their own kind of door
In a parallel universe head to the shore.
Dreamlike and concrete ride all day long
With Troup or with Elvis or your own kind of song.
Marilyn, Misfits, Lucy and Boop
Queens in this world where they’re riding the loop.
Pictures in a city where everyone stands
Girl in a flatbed looks for a man
Like a western movie that never will end
Riding and rambling and stops at a bend
To amble a path worn new to descend
By man and machine – a love to the end.
Sandblasted fenders and bumpers and doors
And Indian mountains stare down by the score
(as riders in Joplin head for the shore).

Explore the “Will Rogers” Americans all
Germans and Dutch are having a ball
In a place that they visit you can call home
But scarce to enter and ramble and roam.
Butterfield Overland, Santa Fe Trail
Hell of a ride that morphed into rail
And then 66 where Okies left ghosts
And hosts of the Main Street serve hot dogs and beer
And barbecued chicken with a southwestern flair.

Traveling companions talk about life
And missed opportunities ignoring the strife
Miners and bikers and shopkeepers talk
Of dreams on the road and things that are lost.
The 66 shield is still in view
Some are old most are new
And pointing to cars through a blue sky and stare
At men turned to boys
Going somewhere.

Harleys and “Vettes” are the wheels of choice
But anything goes so find your own voice
And sing to a tune concealed in your mind
And reveal the spirit that soon you will find.

Route 66 is its own kind of place
When you meet someone there look into their face
Men in their 50’s turn twenty and smile
They’re wiser than kids and not quite as wild
This is a trip of a lifetime my friend
This is America – never to end.