Born to be Wild

against steel highways crossing over prairie land and unto the bleak western sunlight i rear the skull-topped bike o Bessy and rev up pumping to 80 before pushing on the rusted throttle dreadlocks tied behind the ear as helmet signs wave mockingly spearing across the transamerican exit where men can kill cattle or chop cacti with one arm tied or chopped off without his consent in vietnam and lounge in lazy afternoons with banjos and hashbrown wiping the table with the newspaper headlined with election or murder or famine to zoom into the telecasters bloated breasts as her mouth motors off facts or the weather or the lottery or whatever and to shoot at night to kill the earlier bird peeping outside the window and yes that’s what i’ll tell the sheriff that it was a bird and they will agree that a man at the middle of the night is right to make light of the mockingbird and the town will pay homage as i walk down main street one hand a bucket of soiled water the other the smoking gun

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This is the 100 Songs Project, a 100-day writing challenge based on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs. Every day, I write a short poem, prose piece, or play based on, reacting to, rejecting, accepting, or doing something related to one of the songs in the top 100 list.

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