Memories Slide Across The Plains 1 reread

Memories Slide Across The Plains

Memories slide across the plains my car just traveled, Ozarks, Indiana, Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tulsa, truck stops, fog, night shaded darkness, light rain, no snow, from Texas on for days, clear from Albuquerque, from mountains, from deserts, volcanoes, northern hills, mountain top nights, surrounded by crashing lighting, flashes of blue against the green pines in a darkness of nothing except for the loud drunks who came in late and drove into the forests looking for downed trees, laughing loudly about nothing as the drinking continued, drinking that lead them up roads off roads, roads of dirt and rocks, and houses on land rarely seen by most who dream from the east coast but never wake up one day after deciding the terms for a decision and honoring the agreement with god, or the universe, or nothing but themselves depending on what you believe. And on the follow through shedding there past leaving behind what once was thought important and now it’s forgotten but a memory, no evidence of what it once was, to get in the car and drive, go, go, go, no reason why just go, and cross the states never seen before, but no stopping, just drive throughs, drive through states and drive through food, with drive through music and drive through roads in fly over states, to a desert unknown, once seen, in rental cars and jeeps with dogs and ex-girlfriends, an ex-girlfriend, the ex-girlfriend, the one you, the one I can still stop my drive through life, drop everything, open the door, shed what’s left, get out get in and marry, forever and ever the rest of the life from here on out, with her, then and never now but always willing to be with her now.
But in that car and across those states to the one with a sofa and a friend, to the one with the mountains and volcanoes, and dirt and sand and low-riders and gangsters, cowboys and girls and mythical pasts of lands long before our lands centuries old before the country new it was white. Years went by on that drive to mountain tops where thunderclouds clapped and banged in the bright sunlight, across balding peaks of green grass and lakes, trees below along the trail back to cocked up campers drunk and fighting and sheriffs and boy scouts on roads trucks alone could barely climb and night fell and hours went by and days went by and years went by and marriages went by and my divorce went by and my time went by and I saw Europe and Ireland, England and France and every state west and mid but not north east and west just south and middle, three stamps in the book and one land of nowhere on that most people don’t know where, thinking it’s below a boarder it’s above with all the same people the ones from the south, the ones from the conquests past and presents the place where the bomb was designed and made to bang and flashes were seen from miles away in shear blindness followed by death on a scale never seen before in a flash, with no trenches just a few men on a plane and it all began where I was a week ago for five years and a week ago a month from now to the tee when I left to find me there in the land of the bomb and the mountains and the end of everything as it drowns in sunlight, baked into dirt and the brightest darkness.
Dee Lite in head phones, bootsy Collins on base and here we were once in the darkness as lightening strikes and I ask if we’re safe and we are as safe as any other ever which is never and always on the edge of the only known end but with headphones and a tent under starry skies, more pokes of light in the dark than accounted for the 26 years before that moment on the picnic table looking up from under Bjork through the headset but never as profound and sublime as that night years before in the woods of Jemez with her with the next c that followed the first c, but this was different it was all different it’s still different it will never be the same after the first c, that c I always long for though I will always long for the second c who I didn’t live with, who I long to live with, but our heads and our signs are the same and they won’t stop to let us in each other and we were in the woods in the darkness with nobody at the elk mountain, the lodge with the Jacuzzi and the heated floors the lodge for nudity and sex and we were there smoking, as I always smoke it will be my end among ends as we never know our end and we try to stop and play it safe and protect our end, drag out our end, assert our power and control over our end, but it isn’t ours, today is ours and where do I want to be with a c but that’s not mine to own either, I can choose here and now in Baltimore or on the road back to the desert or a train to the city of cities or a plane across the pond or any pond to beaches and jungles and ice and oceans but not to be with her or them, that’s not up to me as it may be to them I can choose to write or make art, beautiful objects to influence culture, but I can’t choose where it goes after I make it, I can’t choose how I make it, the money how much or how little, I can’t choose to hear my brain or feel my mood, I can choose to smoke, to eat, what to eat and when and whether to venture in that other cup another cup and music what I hear but I can’t choose her, I can’t choose my future, my fame, I can only hope and think and calculate and assume, assume that I wake up assume that there is another day and I don’t need to be in Aruba, that I will somehow be in Aruba, or Paris or Indonesia one day, but I can’t choose which day, I can only hope and dream as days pass me by, leave me behind in wonderment of who I am, where I will go, and who I am with, as time passes by and markers come and go places I thought I would be, riches and cities and lives dreamt that I will never live, because here I am back where I started after laying in that hammock that night in Jemez, with hippie and Indian spirits all around and there I lay with the c the next c after the first c but soon to think of the first c and obsess on her likeness for years to come as she chooses where to live and work and be and how much they’ll pay her and why can’t I do that why must I be me driven back here after leaving here to go there and go beyond to the end, the other side where the beach is, where the sun is, where the fist C is,, why did I drive this way, Kerouacian,or Kevorkian, an artist return to work, or suicide assisted through failure and dreams that never came true and rationalizations for how it will be better. Is it better here now then there then, I’ve smiled more, laughed more, kissed touched fucked and ssssss.