The road at night:
an isolating, howling loneliness
of endless, empty,
deserted suburbia;
the plastic, retro loneliness
that papers over rot
The streetlights cast their orange gleam
onto the black asphalt,
their purpose to give shape to the shadows
and transform the world
from simply night
in its star-studded, soft,
warm beauty
to the hidden falseness of another world
thin as a heartbeat
The radio playing
and vague conversations
of music, counterculture, art or science
with driving companions
serve not to eradicate the night
but to underscore
the emptiness
and hollowness
and the endless, endless road
of people driving, driving on
without destination
towards an unknown point
down some arbitrary road
with the scent of petrol, coffee, cigarettes
in halos round their heads
Desperate haunts with desperate eyes,
heading towards a distant dark horizon to escape
money troubles,
man troubles,
problems with the law,
on and on and on in the vain hope
that some Arcadia will rise
up from the road
to offer them Salvation