Momentum
Posted: December 22nd, 2015, 7:44 pm
(final edit on last chapter of my book-- unless someone who might happen to read this points out any place where I might have gone askew on this bit of prosetry fluff. I wrote much of this ten years ago-- can you believe it? Where'd the time go?)
--------------------------------
The engine drones, and layers of grime and salt grace the cab. Dwight Yoakam crackles on the FM ether, and slopes all taper to a single vanishing point under a hot pale sky. Weary of the droning motion, I turn off and rest beside a road sign shredded by shootin' irons: "A*ST*N 1*9 MI" . . . And I see another thin etching stretching from the road. Prospecting never ends.
......I should go scour the bluffs and shout contours; follow their brilliant or wistful shades as the sun arcs. If I made the far shore I could recapture the sunset and all dimensions of gold. I could head out into my interior, to long flats where one can hear thoughts; where they are sometimes deafening. Fit them together, but then release. Release them. Complexity is the devil out here, so wander in a child's eye too simple for its own good, with Uncle Zen always at the margins, ready to roll it all in a ball; simple and complex. The boundless desert.
......My boundless desert was a hunch; a vision I saw on a road to Vegas, but as I tested its reach and raised its dust I found limits. When I was younger it was wide-open, and then some of the roads closed. Some hit fences. Some ended beneath a peak in boulders, and star terrains ran out from there, from this lump of iron and silica spinning in black. The rock flies solo; only a silver moon in tow for company, like a range bum poet, or maybe a gambler up against flash and touch, alone in a crowd of stars. Home is in constant motion.
......What is home anyway? It's the next thin road out to land's end; the drone of too many miles; the great fire orb diving into a brick rim, boiling orange and fattening until it seeps in unexpectedly. Home is so much dust inside my truck that I'll never get it all out. Home is my own church of escapism, though I know in time I'll have no choice but to stop, to chop wood and carry water again.
......Until then I've traded neon for stars on a tailgate porch. Rock meets infinity on trails out past the the last feed store, past rusty radiators, engine blocks, fenders and bed frames dumped at the edge of town. I prefer nights with moon, although she hides stars. For awhile I thought I might find a place at the end of pavement, where I'd slip between worlds at will; a slumped hacienda missing plaster, with sand drifting in the lot and a badly-faded sign minus one letter on a rust-bubbled bent frame hit by Jim's pickup back in '62. I still might find it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In my light years out of scale, I drift over flats and folds, but if with too much momentum it could shatter the effect. And now I've reached the edge once again. I came here with food, and lots of it; a jug of jerky and bag of bourbon. And I came with momentum too; I ran too far, too fast, and I wondered if it followed me here. But that was yesterday. The rock spun another revolution, to desert dawn, and things are clearer now. I notice more distant trails off to nowhere-- the ones that started the trouble in the first place-- but today they hold less sway.
......I sped across the flat and kicked up a chalk roostertail, but that was yesterday. Today I sit on the tailgate with a shot of rebellion and sip freedom in the unknown span. I slip from one solar play to the next, watching to see where they go, long on perception. I'm still finding roads beyond my first ends of the earth; always more etchings wandering off. But at some point I'll reach the edge and vow not go past. I'll repeat the same lie: "No more will I roam."
......Somewhere down the bright shore is an abandoned shack, where reality and imagination cross a rattlesnake porch and go through the same door to come in out of the sun. They eat lunch and hash out their differences, then retreat again into heatwaves that can't tell them apart. And on the bright plane a car flows and shape-shifts into boiling singularity. Or does it move? It's steering wheel vibrates, though no other evidence of motion. It flows toward a point that never existed, like those old ships toward the dropoff at the edge of a flat earth ocean, and comes to rest where it started, as things tend to do here.
......But there's no end to drama even here on the big bright empty; echoes of inner noise projected across thin air onto invisible entities of inner fears. At noon, jilted gods argue atop fuzzy tan above a plane of cracked white marble coveted by kings, and throughout the blinding desert moments like centuries, kingdoms rise and fall and make their cases, rattling and verbose; how the west was won; how the east was lost; how the south ignored them both. Patience ye kings! The flats and bluffs will hear your beefs in good time.
......I ignore the quarreling gods; they start to fade past the horizon. There will be lots of time for that, but not enough time for this. And I stare at the white marble with undue intensity, and stand up to preach at the sun. My view is clear; I'm the fount of channeled wisdom up there, spilling silky sermons like a fresh caress of dust from this aimless desert with soul. Entire worlds hang in the balance, but for an audience.
......But that was yesterday. The rock spun one more turn in black sheen and killed the last traces of sunburnt philosophy and undue urges to sermonize, and now there will be only this cracked white marble, fuzzy tan, light and space.
--------------------------------
The engine drones, and layers of grime and salt grace the cab. Dwight Yoakam crackles on the FM ether, and slopes all taper to a single vanishing point under a hot pale sky. Weary of the droning motion, I turn off and rest beside a road sign shredded by shootin' irons: "A*ST*N 1*9 MI" . . . And I see another thin etching stretching from the road. Prospecting never ends.
......I should go scour the bluffs and shout contours; follow their brilliant or wistful shades as the sun arcs. If I made the far shore I could recapture the sunset and all dimensions of gold. I could head out into my interior, to long flats where one can hear thoughts; where they are sometimes deafening. Fit them together, but then release. Release them. Complexity is the devil out here, so wander in a child's eye too simple for its own good, with Uncle Zen always at the margins, ready to roll it all in a ball; simple and complex. The boundless desert.
......My boundless desert was a hunch; a vision I saw on a road to Vegas, but as I tested its reach and raised its dust I found limits. When I was younger it was wide-open, and then some of the roads closed. Some hit fences. Some ended beneath a peak in boulders, and star terrains ran out from there, from this lump of iron and silica spinning in black. The rock flies solo; only a silver moon in tow for company, like a range bum poet, or maybe a gambler up against flash and touch, alone in a crowd of stars. Home is in constant motion.
......What is home anyway? It's the next thin road out to land's end; the drone of too many miles; the great fire orb diving into a brick rim, boiling orange and fattening until it seeps in unexpectedly. Home is so much dust inside my truck that I'll never get it all out. Home is my own church of escapism, though I know in time I'll have no choice but to stop, to chop wood and carry water again.
......Until then I've traded neon for stars on a tailgate porch. Rock meets infinity on trails out past the the last feed store, past rusty radiators, engine blocks, fenders and bed frames dumped at the edge of town. I prefer nights with moon, although she hides stars. For awhile I thought I might find a place at the end of pavement, where I'd slip between worlds at will; a slumped hacienda missing plaster, with sand drifting in the lot and a badly-faded sign minus one letter on a rust-bubbled bent frame hit by Jim's pickup back in '62. I still might find it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In my light years out of scale, I drift over flats and folds, but if with too much momentum it could shatter the effect. And now I've reached the edge once again. I came here with food, and lots of it; a jug of jerky and bag of bourbon. And I came with momentum too; I ran too far, too fast, and I wondered if it followed me here. But that was yesterday. The rock spun another revolution, to desert dawn, and things are clearer now. I notice more distant trails off to nowhere-- the ones that started the trouble in the first place-- but today they hold less sway.
......I sped across the flat and kicked up a chalk roostertail, but that was yesterday. Today I sit on the tailgate with a shot of rebellion and sip freedom in the unknown span. I slip from one solar play to the next, watching to see where they go, long on perception. I'm still finding roads beyond my first ends of the earth; always more etchings wandering off. But at some point I'll reach the edge and vow not go past. I'll repeat the same lie: "No more will I roam."
......Somewhere down the bright shore is an abandoned shack, where reality and imagination cross a rattlesnake porch and go through the same door to come in out of the sun. They eat lunch and hash out their differences, then retreat again into heatwaves that can't tell them apart. And on the bright plane a car flows and shape-shifts into boiling singularity. Or does it move? It's steering wheel vibrates, though no other evidence of motion. It flows toward a point that never existed, like those old ships toward the dropoff at the edge of a flat earth ocean, and comes to rest where it started, as things tend to do here.
......But there's no end to drama even here on the big bright empty; echoes of inner noise projected across thin air onto invisible entities of inner fears. At noon, jilted gods argue atop fuzzy tan above a plane of cracked white marble coveted by kings, and throughout the blinding desert moments like centuries, kingdoms rise and fall and make their cases, rattling and verbose; how the west was won; how the east was lost; how the south ignored them both. Patience ye kings! The flats and bluffs will hear your beefs in good time.
......I ignore the quarreling gods; they start to fade past the horizon. There will be lots of time for that, but not enough time for this. And I stare at the white marble with undue intensity, and stand up to preach at the sun. My view is clear; I'm the fount of channeled wisdom up there, spilling silky sermons like a fresh caress of dust from this aimless desert with soul. Entire worlds hang in the balance, but for an audience.
......But that was yesterday. The rock spun one more turn in black sheen and killed the last traces of sunburnt philosophy and undue urges to sermonize, and now there will be only this cracked white marble, fuzzy tan, light and space.