Gettysburg Auto Tour
An American Road Poem
by Henry Crawford

it's forever July in this
souvenir town of bobble head
presidents of rebel flag shot
glasses of general Lee and
Grant locked in permanent
surrender on the muraled walls
of pancake houses of declarations
and proclamations in yellowed
artificial parchment it's a
"We The People" town pouring
onto its Sunday streets in pursuit
of one-eyed happiness

behold the RVs
and the children of RVs
lined up along the battlefields
their funnel cake fingers
on phones and devices
searching for subjects
as a roadside ranger holds
forth like a self-evident
Solomon at a loss
to describe the double blind
crime coursing through
the silent minds of onlookers
staring directly into the
empty sets of men and
equals in the forsaken
American syllogism:

[all men] are [created equal]

XM Radio plays to
rounds of empty cannons
as satellite waves surround
the improv cemetery of devil's den
making a disco of the wheat field
hustling in the peach orchard
pumping out the subwoofer beats
of Donna Summer's Bad Girls
[beep beep] those founding slavers
[beep beep] wanted a good time
[beep beep] in houses too high
[beep beep] to see the ground
[beep beep] leaving the bricks
[beep beep] leaving the stones
[beep beep] to be carried by others
[beep beep] going up the hills
[beep beep] that lead to mountains
[beep beep] of forbidden homes
[beep beep] to the private libraries
[beep beep] of enlightened men
[beep beep] considering the view
[beep beep] from private Monticellos

fences of [X's] partition
the battlefields the way
election day works with
little [X's] in cold November
boxes unless you failed the test
[or] can't prove you're a citizen
[or] don't have a driver's license
[or] don't live in the right place
[or] don't have the means
[or] can't get off from work
[or] you live behind a fence
built by fence builders
to keep you fenced in
so you don't go over
the line

there's blood on these tracks
where Gilbert Moss put a knife
in the throat of Andy Sims
then took a face full of grapeshot
and unknown soldier after
unknown soldier beat each other
to death by fists, by swords
by skulls, by clubs, by ax and rocks,
by ropes, by foot, by the slitting
of throats and shoving off
cliffs, by RNA and DNA,
by genes and by vengeance,
by hard-wired hate
packed white to the bone,
by day and by night the killer
of homos, the slaughter
of creatures, destroyer
of worlds, the big gang banger
no descendant of this line
and certainly no man
allowed an excuse

say what
[say] I'm afraid
[say] I'm tired of feeling so lost
[say] I'm angry and I don't know why
[say] it hurts
[say] it hurts a lot
[say] it hurts to live this way
[say] it is not right
[say] it does not feel right
[say] it feels unjust
[say] I am confused
[say] I don't know
[say] I want to stop hurting
[say] I want to stop the pain
[say] I want it to end
[say] I'm sick of this wound
that cuts so wide you need a car
to take it all in

It feels like zero
in this darkening park
the shadow fields
of uniform graves
where heroes come
to life again in passionate
dioramas like vampires
of the symbols they carry
asking us the way out of here
to leave behind the summers
of Jim Crow drive off
the one-way streets
of Greensboro
avoid the reckless cars
of Charlottesville
asking us which way
to the better angels
of our nature

it's a driver's choice
at the end of the tour
north or south
right or left
check both ways
shoot a quick look
in the mirror choice
is the unalterable
highway take another
look check the GPS
tread lightly onto this road
the wheels are always turning
with no turning back