Paint It Blue

Chain smoking for a cause,
wild eyes fixed on Santa Claus:
his handbag tossed into the back.
The taxi being driven by constable Jack,
gasping in delirium with a new bouquet
of pepper and spices lighting the way,
the trumpets of Jericho inside his head
trying to remember what the Good Book said.
Rushing through traffic at breakneck speed
like a rolling stone forgetting to bleed.
Hairpin turns disappearing under the floor,
adrift in the middle of an American shore.
Strong-smelling urine and long, twisted wires:
smog alerts and climate change fires.
On one side along the northern walls
sitting on steps below Niagara Falls,
he pointed his light but found no relief;
the frenzied citizens called him a thief,
asking each other why they were there,
leaning over the railings in great despair.
No gesture or pose on the southern line
(where humans watched reruns of Andy Devine)
could illuminate what it was all about:
the sound in the distance an improvised shout.
He must have forgotten and no one else knew
the gas tank was bleeding and covered in blue.
Jack headed westerly with his date,
found the valley office and pulled in late:
women's names and graffiti of all kinds
written in obscurity behind yellow lines.
He grabbed an eraser from a school room cage;
the silicon citizens flew into a rage:
a handful of anger and Hollywood Park.
So they hopped in the taxi and drove east after dark
to the sandy beaches of Atlantic City;
they didn't have anything to say that was witty,
their beards harboring fresh tobacco juice.
It was soon time for cooking the infernal goose.
Who is it? Oh, simply man and his desire:
the boardwalk shudders as they're changing a tire!
In any case no abstraction can be made.
They fled that taxi where it laid
in a blaze of footlights and dying laughter.
Paradise and Inferno were what they were after.