Tin Lizards

ROBERT LEBLANC

A Lizard’s Dream

Ali Zarrin

A road made of sweat, blood and steel

The will of men to cut timber

To chart and change the prairies into cities of gold, liquor, capital and greed

Oolong Chai steeping in the cold tent

In the winter of Wyoming and Utah

The fastest path from ocean to ocean

From Toronto to Chicago

From Reno to Mexico City

The choo choo of life on wheels

Carrying your home with you

Your bed, your memories,

Planting them somewhere new

Between rock and a hard place

Growing wheat and barley

Raising families of piety and incest

The whistle that shattered the Shaman’s magic, Mixture of buffalo dung and prim roses of the Parisian perfumes

Long, laced gowns and decorated hats

Bringing beauty and cruelty to wilderness

Carrying gold, money, guns and machine guns, dynamite, flesh, fruit and vegetables, Marshalls, Lawyers and Judges and the Doc Cliches of Hollywood always drunk and funny, The news of another streak of gold

Another advancement in the heart of the Cheyenne

Transporting pure Christians

To an Impure land of wind, salt, and scrub oaks,

This is my land in the sleeper car,

This is my music, my midnight special, behind the bars at Angola, This is my dream of climbing the Rockies,

Passing through the Sierras in the winter of cannibalism and survival

This is my dream of building cities and destroying men and animals in the state of nature,

This is my glory of power transporting soldiers and machine guns, Coal tinged with the blood coughed up by the Italian miners at Sand Creek,

This is sojourn and permanent residence in the invaded land of the natives, This is my casino and its proud owners smoking a peace pipe

This is my boyish face growing hair turning gray and straggly, This is my fancy depo with tall ceiling

Adorned with the paintings of Diego Rivera, The Beaux Arts of Reed, Stem, Warren and Wetmore, The hurried passengers of daily busy bodies of industry and commerce, The marble floors of faith in humanity and progress, The shapes of endorsement

This is the dream of hobos and artists hopping on the empty carts

And traveling forever on the “freedom highway” of Woody Guthrie, Moving through the heartland that pierced our imagination of wonder, courage and insanity, Capitalism at its best and worst shining the clicky-clacks of the carts-“Gaps in the rail to allow for thermal expansion”

Our conquest of the west and beyond,

Aid to 1906 San Francisco victims of earthquake and fire, Our fortune of joy and disaster tearing through the dark wilderness With the sun coming up on its shoulders