Desperate Times

I’m more afraid of what I’m going to say
than the kid strapped in the roller coaster
who at moment one just wants to run away.
There are empty patches out here left forgotten
just to be a piece of land you see when driving
through a different part of town.
Dying cows with nothing on their minds
stand there like statues while the crops are born
to make up all the losses of the prior years
when things weren’t clear at all.
Let me see if I can remember this landscape
as a way to test my skill at hanging on.
Being cool to me has always been a second
tail burst sideways from the first one like
an intersection of the possible now distorted.
Sliding notes under doors has become
a higher stakes coin flip than it was a decade
ago, but I don’t know, that change
was probably for the better.
The clock in the pavilion is fast by three minutes
so at closing all the barflies simply
hit it with their cars to slow it down.
On one attempt they actually got the hands
to turn back and with this promise now fulfilled
the bar reopened up its doors and let them in.