mother road, have mercy upon
your restless witless wandering son
doomed to examine a sprawling vastness
tangled with eyesores of a bygone glory
sprouting billboards garnishing
a red-sand eden tactlessly
sweet with sorrow in the dusk
weeping juniper agonizes;
for nameless ones who chanced your wiles
dreaming sons with distracted smiles
barely seeing this rugged stretch
of the tattered Americana quilt
spangled with the tuneful ruins
not disharmonious in their dissimilation,
but with ghostly demeanors they recall
years outstretched in rear view’s cache

mother road, I enter your asphalt embrace
via Holbrook’s faceless dreamless dirge
of dried-up motels shriveling screaming
voicelessly sun-peeled, glaringly empty
where concrete wigwams and dinosaur fun parks
coexist haggardly in the petrifying noon heat
discordant strains echoing down potholed avenue
recanting all vulgarity at the faraway sight of sacred mesas
so plays the silent chorus of reception, dismissal, remittance
here where Navajo county’s swirling vortex resides
upon first sight of this withering municipality
as the highway breaks through holy red rock
my allotment of pulsating essence surges
momentarily unhinging me
gradually becoming
beatific

then
emerging spontaneously
comes the predictable realignment
and the boundaries of form are again apparent
I awake in wonder, gawking at brick-skinned corpses
fractured glass-sheets molested by the elements
dust-colored cocoons keeping in their custody
bruised imaginings and famished apparitions
held by ambiguity to this unyielding land
saturating the streets in sadness
driving the desperate to the train tracks
singing siren-songs of suicidal sacrifice
saying “join us in the rocks” here
in the consecrated plateaus
where the intangibles hide

the rotundity of the on-ramp
brings me full circle and loosens
Holbrook’s white-knuckled grip;
my ventricles widen and the nectar flows
reviving the literary gland,
nothing but open road before me
the burning coals I’ve walked
barefoot, behind,
released from captivity,
unfettered in this desert of many jewels
enlightened by the sun glimmering
off sand specks and broken shards
a scripture unto itself, dictated directly
revealing artisan hands beyond the guessed-at

a rapid aquiline swerve to the right
to pay my respects to an unlikely slab
of pristinely preserved marble-wood
resting on it’s side as if newly fallen
providentially in the abrupt proximity
of a route 66 memorabilia peddler
brim overrunning with cheaply constructed
feathery dream-catchers, tomahawks, baskets of burden
dashboard fortune-bringing trinkets of the dangling variety;
my rearview stem already over-swagged by analogous novelties,
I disembark solely for the glimpse of ancient lumber
laying there scalloped with a permanent Jurassic hangover
perhaps a male stegosaur once lifted a stumpy leg to it
thinking I can see where, squinting just right,
I retreat to my air-conditioned membrane
to continue the crawling sojourn

happening upon Winslow as if startling it suddenly;
the double-take it gives me further propagates unpreparedness
familiar with this settlement’s diesel-rendezvous venues
and not much else, I stagger into the Flying J’s
harvesting a bounty of Styrofoam-chaliced truckstop coffee
tempered with plastic-wrapped lembas-like roadtrippy vittles,
topping off my thirsty cistern with overpriced petroleum
and heading on out of these dust devil breeding grounds
with no spousal passenger ogling the odometer
unthinkingly, I transcend all limitations including those of speed
thankfully, I come nowhere within the clutches of status-quo implementers
seeing as out here where the scent of pine commences progressively,
only the wind infers normalcy sufficiently anyway
and with only the unmoved mover policing the wind,
I find myself granted passage, which I employ to deflect
all undue attention of the flashing red and blue variety.

this unscuffed terrain my coasting contraption
slices through lightly; accumulating bug innards.
sometimes the rain hangs prayerfully over
this holy parched ground in upward adoration
crackling dryly in anticipation,
fanatically friendly to moistening vigor
the sky superfluously sings into substance
a flailing whipping blanket of precipitation
curling up overhead with watery intention.

other days the fiery retina’s glare beats down hard
clarifying every dangling pine needle piercingly
as the topography turns leisurely to high-country vegetation,
so does the air convey a crinkled chill spiced with reminiscence
converging back upon it’s ripened self sideways, time is unzipped
and everything I wish I was once or hope to be someday
culminates in a whirling apex of unbridled likelihood
the realm of assumed identities based on assigned numbers
receding now into the tar pits of the unremembered
resting snugly within the confines of my cranial sphere
evaporating into non-being without my even noticing

now the emptiness previously occupied
by outer-shell manifestations
rushes to judgment in favor
of the looming San Francisco peaks
balding regally on the horizon,
capped with last winter’s generosity
as the stoic pines now arriving in clusters
seem to be hiding smirks beneath their bark

the mother road has lured me here again
where the college-town air itself is caffeinated
and inter-dimensional passageways compressed
into hardback rectangular casks graze as herds
waiting to be picked off one by one
by predatory credit-card wielding
practitioners of linguistic geekery
hiding here in the mega-temple of sacred script
open to all who throb with an inexpressible curiosity
and ache with a wonderment indefinable
to come let the eye feast and the soul scarf down
ethereal breast milk from beyond the known fringes
that existence overlaps into and is reinterpreted by
replanted upon rebirth in the shuffling pages
I flip through sipping dark sultry java

and while I’m inside, the heavenly spheres go ever on
leapfrogging, spindle-weaving, toggling moons.
seas are boiled by wayward meteors
gasses harden birthing planets
somewhere in this astral clamor,
our gyrating earth completes it’s spin
and shadows grow long while ray-ensnared dustmotes
ascend the radiant pillar like saints to the white rose

led homeward,
my shimmying chariot
making more noise than need be
and displaying the gall of a trail mule
being pulled in an undesirable direction,
stereo blaring a glittery nocturne
I am undone by this mother road
and will miss her wanderlust voice
when in silence I flop face first
into my pillow, still seeing
her bendy swerves and
traversed skin replaying
itself over and over
under my
eyelids.
 
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