Replying to Poetry

I think it's been acknowledged that this cult is pretty dead, but I'll contribute anyway.

I've been increasingly interested in poetry. I took a course on Canadian Lit this year which featured a lot of poetry and found that I was genuinely inspired by it. I know poetry has a tendency to come off as soft, but whatever. I'm completely new to the game so everything I've got is pretty raw and not very good, but I'm working on refining it and trying to focus on a particular project. If you have anything you'd like to contribute, please feel free. Also critiques are welcomed and encouraged.

That night in the Mile,

I had no company but the half broken stanza
that reminds us of home;
under the halogen glow of broken dreams
and a hometown that sucks you deeper
like so much quicksand
until forty years have passed by,
roaring like the semis on the highway,
unrelenting and faceless.

Those degenerate youth with too much self-confidence,
unaware that they don’t have enough.
They circle the block once, twice -
slowed to a crawl in the black heat of the night.
Their kingdom spans three stop lights,
one Mile amongst hundreds on that unnatural river.

And you in the phone booth,
you screaming at the disembodied voice;
compressed, changed, no longer human
but what’s the difference?
Those dramas of some faraway southern metropolis
seem inconsequential in the mind’s eye.
She’s gone and you too,
swept into the channel, swept downstream.

I want to get away from this halogen glow;
as if from some almanac on capitalist waste.
Drive us back into the woods,
back into that black, immobile heat.
Let the deep cuts, B sides play us off, take us home.
The world is asleep for us,
but somewhere a city suffers from eternal insomnia.