Signs in the sky

Where a typical ride along I-80 turns into a foreboding sign...

The sun trumpets over I-80 
like the car radio blasting out 
Dizzy Gillespie. A flood of Sunday cars 
flow westward, heading into a work zone, 
into a project that will never be completed, 
a perfect money sinkhole to keep 
bureaucracy’s wheels turning smoothly.  

                                           Signs posted along 
the way order us to reduce our speed
to 45 mph; I comply like an obedient slave
but the other cars just blow right past 
with no regard for anyone but
themselves.

When arrogance mixes with
gasoline, velocity always wins.

                                  And riding past 
the Indiana rock quarry always 
makes me think of Dante’s descent
into the Inferno; how these cars—
mine among them—are making
their descent into another type of
hell, a hell of our own making…

                              Meanwhile the sky 
stretches over and beyond 
the interstate, dragging waves of
scalloped clouds laced with intersecting
chemtrails (aka plane cocaine) drawn by
unknown planes with equally unknown
destinations.  

                               My heart crumples
like a candy wrapper as 
those clouds morph into a mardi 
gras mask that frowns over the city 
like Fantasia’s Chernabog.

The impatient drivers still ignore the signs…