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I Told You I Would Write This Goddamn Poem
by Amber Leffler

I told you I would write this goddamn poem
about wanting to dump my tank of gasoline
into your barbeque, my shiny quarters
into your old time-y jukebox, my
lighter to your Winstons, and
my desperado sagebrush fantasies
of Bonnie and Clyde into your getaway
car that would have us making Vegas
and the Elvis Chapel in three days
or two, or maybe less if we don't sleep,
but you know we never sleep anyway.
There's so much Armageddon in the world
right now it lights the cracks of sidewalks
and our hands with mushroom clouds
of rain and traffic lights that halo
the Columbia, it's the end of the world
that drives us the way outlaws of my
imagination bomb in El Caminos
through the Midwest of my personal
mythology, it's that feeling of No Time
that jangles us sleepless as cell phones
to suck illicit drags from one another's
skins like stolen cigarettes or slugs
from the last bottle of red wine
left on the table. But didn't I warn you,
I ought to come with warning labels
like any sin worth paying for,
and you should believe me. I am
amped up enough to buzz louder
than just audible, and I am incessant
All Through The Night, I swear
there's a Cyndi Lauper song here
somewhere, and it sounds like the same
sad neon glamour we talk about,
a new cliché for being buzzed inside
the smoky barrooms of St. Johns,
but I don't care. So long as you will drive
the getaway car, I'll strap myself
in shotgun, and vow to chew on your
tattoos until your skin will know
the names of all my teeth, and I will
write another goddamn poem
that starts with barbeques and ends
with Burning Love, and
all that charcoal that just winks
like diamonds of acrylic paint
inside the eyes of velvet Elvises
along the badlands of two thousand miles
between this moment and the morning.



Amber also writes under the pseudonym Starlite Motel.












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