“What’s that on yer iTunes, dude?”
“Simon an’ Garfunkel tune, dude. ‘America’.”
“Simon an’ who?”
“Garfunkel. Like I sed tha first time. Dude.”
“Get real, dude. Nobody’s got no name as funked up as Garfunkel! Not intentionally, anyways.”
“So yer OK wit’ like Tupac an’ Ludacris, but not wit’ Garfunkel? Get over it, dude, it’s his real name. Arthur Garfunkel, no less.”
“Woooo-ee! How did he, like, survive?”
“It was 1972. Peeps were weird back then.”
“1972? Man, that’s retro.”
“Good ’nuff fer Bernie Sanders.”
“Who’s way retro. Lotta good it did him, ‘r us.”
“Yo. Y’wanna listen to tha song ‘r what?”
“Yeah, well, like, touch tha screen already!”
Let us be lovers,
We’ll marry our fortunes together.
“Simon an’ Garfunkel got married?!?”
“Not ‘less ‘Kathy’s’ code talk ‘r somethin’, dude. ‘Course, they did fight a lot …”
I’ve got some real estate
Here in my bag.
“How the hell …”
“Ssshh!”
So we bought a pack of cigarettes,
And Mrs. Wagner’s pies,
And walked off
To look for America.‘Kathy’, I said,
As we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh,
Michigan seems like a dream to me now.
“What, you can get high on the lead in yer drinkin’ water?”
It took me four days
To hitch-hike from Saginaw.
‘I’ve come to look for America.’
“Right. Look, dude, you an’ me get hitchhikin’ when ya gotta get someplace wit’out bread, but why waste all that energy lookin’ fer America, huh? Ain’t that what YouTube’s for?”
“They didn’t have YouTube back then.”
“They didn’t?!?”
“An’ they prolly couldn’t afford National Geographic.”
“What was that?”
“Porn. On paper. Before the internet.”
“Before …”
“No, they didn’t have that either. Can I start the song again now?”
“No internet … Yeah, OK.”
Laughing on the bus,
Playing games with the faces,
She said the man in the gabardine suit
Was a spy.
“Prolly TSA.”
“Not on the buses, dude!”
“Yeah? An’ how come yer so sure ’bout this …?”
I said, ‘Be careful,
His bow tie is really a camera.’
“An’ readin’ tha signals offa yer cell too while he’s at it.”
“No cellphones, dude.”
“What …?”
‘Toss me a cigarette,
I think there’s one in my raincoat.’
“What’s all this ’bout cigarettes, dude? Didn’t nobody care?”
“Not really.”
“An’ since when did they get ta smoke on that bus?”
“Since when if’n ya complained, thirty big dudes would rear up an’ throw ya off!”
“Rad.”
“Now, if’n ya wuz stupid ’nuff ta pull out a reefer …”
We smoked the last one
An hour ago.
So I looked at the scenery,
She read her magazine;
“They could afford that porn!”
And the moon rose over an open field.
‘Kathy, I’m lost’, I said,
Though I knew she was sleeping.
‘I’m empty and aching and
I don’t know why.’
“How ’bout ’cause yer hungry an’ broke an’ stressed, an’ ya ain’t got no tech ‘r smokes ‘r weed, an’ ya ain’t got no sniff nohow of it gettin’ any better any time afore ya die! Get a clue, dude!”
Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come
To look for America,
All come to look for America …
“Dude?”
“What?”
“I think they’ve found it.”
“Y’mean, yer afraid they’ve found it. Or their camp wit’in it.”
“Yeah. Somethin’ like that.”
“Ain’t pretty, yeah?”
“Yeah. Less’n ya count tha fireworks.”
“Like tha ones in Afghanistan an’ Syria? An’, like, Orlando?”
“Dude.”