A Leaving States Poem (AKA How I Kicked the Boredom) .
Out of Colorado, Wyoming is colder,
flat and flowing with small hills and snow,
and lasting longer than forever, becoming
a big, boring square in the landscape of my head.

Ravines and rivers, veins in the temple of my head,
exploding into long gashes freezing over, frozen
ponds with dead ducks under them. Moving
away, kicking the blood in my legs, kicking up.

My feet freezing against the brake, the windmills
in Wyoming pushed all wind my way, and slow,
slower, and slower my truck pushed up against all
those little hills, growing colder by the second,
just outside of Colorado, now, and then, a little
further away from another grey square having
done penned me in.

Tall white windmills, thin and pushing cold blue air
around, keeping, somewhere, some people in and
from Wyoming warm in their places and spots.
The blood still moving in spots, stops moving
in place, in places, little black and blue marks,
little punishments for placements, misplacement,
and landmarks made out bone, sometimes skin,
marks made from lacking movements, or wills to,
and a little bit of love, in long poems shaped
like California, wet edged and running.

I was headed to the running leg of California.
The long poem of borders, wet with whitewash,
cold only in the north, and cold always at night,
reddish on the inner part from rubbing.
I was headed to California with the 7 hours thru
the small hills and snow of windy Wyoming with
windmills pushing cold wind about, my landscape
constantly forming, icing on the lake, mountains
in the background, jagged and raw but for their blankets,
and little ski hats topping off their caps,
growing colder with each second, now, and then,
too, up past little roadside markers for dead Natives,
and greyness everywhere pushing me up thru
Wyoming, toward a few more states leaving
space a bit longer than forever, past Utah and Nevada,
home to where I roam, where I belong, in warm
California, my buffalo skin pulsing there,
my Golden Gate Parks, actors for governors,
protests, inactions, my actions, Pacific Ocean,
soft mountains, the Sierras, the seagulls and ravens,
oh and where I left my heart, my heart beats there
under bridges and in subway gardens of fluorescent paints—
I’m moving without a thought but my frozen legs
keeping my frozen feet against the accelerator,
away from geographical centers, pushing up against
the leg running west, kicking and screaming away
from Colorado squares and Wyoming squares, and the
squares in Utah and Nevada, growing colder in each
mile, warming up only when wet with California,
punished for the longing, and pushing against the wind,
until the wind brings waves and my cold face crashing.  ¶ 11:53 AM