Riding North on I-95

A crowd of monstrous giraffes

strips leaves off the World Tree.
Their hot black tongues lie folded
and twisted across the earth,
          Seething snapshots on every atlas page.

Saliva glistens on the spent branches,
slides down to the poison the roots.
Some boils away, becoming rain,
soaking the earth in slippery spit,
          Each ditch a pestilent runnel of ropy sputum.

The hills groan beneath their weight,

too many wrapped too tight.
Dirt bulges and spills
where they cut and cross.
           Our history: these rocky scars like fallen monuments.

We live on the rat-king knot-nexus,

plague fleas sucking at open sores.
Black blood rises, but we can only
vomit this petroleum pus,
           Our cities an infection carved into struggling flesh.

Which open throat do we face,

toxic cud belching from below?
Who can tell with so much pressing flesh
and so many open jaws,
          Rows of white teeth rotting in the graveyard hills.