Salvador Dali’s Melted Tree House - Poetry

We fly like angels through tin pan alley on wings of warbled words along trashcan roads to secret wrecks lost in the junkyards of derelict dreams. Drunk on persimmon wine I carry her down memory lane looking for derelict cars in the haze of lost America where crushed beer bottles are strewn on junkyard plantations of golden-age rust buckets. A mustang chassis catches the rain. The concentric circles of a shattered windshield are a catcher of the American dream. The hood is a seat for weary pilgrims who can’t find their way home. Lost in the purple sunset we await the gospel dawn in the backseat of a Chevy. She yells, “A round of stout kisses on the house!” She paints my face with lipstick until we yodel in a duet of beer-drinking songs. She says, “Bartender, give me a mug of barleywine strong enough to peel the paint from a 1970 Buick.” “But all we have is the natural light I picked up at the convenience store.” “Then let’s get just tipsy enough to celebrate Oktoberfest in this scrapheap.” “New Orleans is our Bavaria on the bayou.” She replies, “We may not get drunk but we are happy as possums sharing a sweet potato.” Once upon a time, I strolled through a forest whose trees grew under highway overpasses and along a waterway that drained a localized watershed—the contrast between graffiti and nature made for a heady walk. There, nature grew wild but not entirely free with even the stream made into a concrete drainage canal for the effluence of civilization. And so along the banks where chemical wastes flow, the purple tears of wisteria fall from oaks in fragrant reminders of how exquisite sadness can be. Their bouquet is like the perfume of a ballerina who blossoms when most of her colleagues are just retiring. – John Hindle