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Busting Out
by Earl Coleman

If the market don’t get you then the workload will
as you take three jobs for a thousand dollar bill
with a broom up your ass and your gut on fire
and your creditors nagging at the end of the wire
and your wife’s run off and your margin is due
and your daughter’s on crack, and there’s no one to sue
for your fucked-up life and your dreams of riches,
of wheels and boats and sun and stitches
and gourmet pasta and pears out of season
and sinful chocolate to subvert your reason;
then it’s half past quotes and the next gig’s far
and you race to your ultimate mag wheel car,
and you tool on out like commercials claim
cause you need no family, joy or brain -
there’s the road to love and the power to take it,
your Beamer, your threads, to prove you could make it,
but you drive to the edge where a change is blowing
and you pass all the malls and you keep on going,
past the smell of the oil and the stink of the glut
and you find yourself thinking you could live in a hut
at the end of nowhere minus all this gear
and shake off the nightmare they’ve dreamed up here.

(Published in Thin Air, Vol. VI, no. 2, 2001)