Wastelander Aspen
7/04/2009
Wastelander I

“I am what is around me.” --Wallace Stevens, “Theory”

#

Illinois to Colorado June 2009

Achin’ and weary after a month
on the road, book tour and burying Grandma
too much monkey business spinnin’ head blues.

But the road is open.
And off, across the Ol’ Miss, beyond the corn,
across Iowa, across
Nebraska,
The Holy Stony Mtns
still rise like a step
ladder to God,
they’re still calling.

#

Illinois
the night before—
waiting
for midnight tornado.

#

FRIDAY
No tornado action:
minor basement flooding.
Again.

Thunder rumbles to the west.
We roll
into twister
territory.

#

Rest area writing break:
insane angry sky delivered
kung-fu beatdowns to the earth.
rained so hard
it looked like fog
made of boulders.
Clouds sped south barely skimming
the tops of low prairie trees.
Then sped north a mile away.
South: all black.
Lightning in place for long beats
like a Dali surreal crutch
holding up the storm.
Guy in front of us forced
onto the shoulder by rain-fear. Then

a break

and suddenly:

sheep!

#

Iowa. Green.
The Mississippi whispering
its old come-on:
“Psst! Hey kid! Throw in
a raft—I’ll take ye
to New Orleans!”

#

Taco Bell in Iowa. Mixed metaphor.
Man taking orders has a Bluetooth,
talks to his wife as he takes orders
saying, “Hi Babe,” and “I love ya
honey” and “OK Sweetie!” while
Iowans stare and mutter, “Huh?
All I want’s a burrito.”

Me? I’m wearing my
Funkadelic
Maggot Brain
t-shirt.

I get looks.
I’m like,
“What?”

#

Thinking:
Hey—what is that sculpture over there?
Realizing:
Oh! It’s farm equipment.

#

Rich electro-dung
fertilizes these fields—we scatter
BBC Radio 1 in the middle of
the Great Plains, we’re
Twittering, checking
book reviews on the iPhone, a spy
satellite murmurs co-ordinates to us in
a bored Brit woman’s voice on the GPS,
the kids work computers, personal audio
systems and Gameboys in the back.
Poor ol’ me,
pen in hand &
notebook on knee.

#

I brought a venus flytrap for a mascot.

#

WTF # 1:
Tanker truck in front of us
hauling double-tanks:
PORK PLASMA—
Not For Human Consumption.

#

It’s the distant dead farms
gone silvergray in the weather, gone
off-plumb and about to topple
that are the best:
whole crops of story & song
in those shadows.

#

Monster sky bends down to look at us.
His belly is so dark
highway light post bulbs
flicker on.

And

The Red Sea
closes over the highway.

Violence. Wind, standing water,
hammering rain,
no visibility. Van slides.
Cars fall away.

You start to look
For funnel clouds.

“Auntie Em! Auntie
Em!”

#

Rain too loud to hear radio.
Lightning forms webs above us.

#

Chayo and I buck the family’s
chocolate trend
& eat carrots.

#

Rain on and off all day. Council Bluffs in gloom.
Coffee. Des Moines invisible in downpour.
Coffee.

I want to live on the banks of the Raccoon River.
Or even better, The Little Raccoon.
“Little Raccoon” sounds like
A poem by Mary Oliver or
A kids’ book title. I’ll take it!

#

Western Iowa traffic jam. Seriously?
Between soy bean fields and cattle yards?
10 miles an hour.
cows and crows
are mocking us.

#

Baffled by my past.
Astounded by my present.
Surrendered to my future.
#

Middle River has a dull name,
but is a pretty little thing.
A slender beauty
looking shy down there
among the cottonwoods.

#

Through a vast wind-farm,
where the propeller towers
rotate silently, turning their faces
like giant robot sunflowers.

#

Lincoln. Omaha. Slog in variable sun.
Fall into motel. Chayo’s mood ring
says I am tired.

Bad food. No blankets for the kids. The
hotel room trash can
has a dog food can in it. And I got
slaughtered in the S.F. Chronicle today.
Crazy mouth-foaming assault that will, I swear,
seem funny in a few days.
I am not only a bad writer, but a stupid writer, and worse
critics dare compare me to Garcia Marquez! It’s the first
review ever of my blurbs!
Wait, it’s already funny.

#

SATURDAY

Last night, as we got into bed,
a huge black motel beetle
jumped out of the pillow and onto
Cinderella’s hair & the girls
started screaming w/ Instant
Beetlephobia.
I really shouldn’t laugh.

#

Bad book review?
Sun’s up. Crops are growing.
Sky’s huge. Iran is exploding.
Real things
matter.

Guts all over the road.
Girls find something worse than the beetle
to be unhappy about.

#

Joy and Delight—
Chayo gets me to play her “Horror Hop” monster
music CD—big kids collapse in profound
soul-pain—it’s so uncool, man! It’s so, like,
not Nine Inch Nails or the Killers, dude!
Suddenly, the dull acerbic tones of tsst-tsst-
tsst-tsst twin earbuds cranking emo &
industrial hiss from the middle seats.
Chayo & me, in shades,
car-dancing.
Wifey, reading paper,
maintains a frozen
smile.

#

Sign said:
JESUS IS RISEN.
Cinderella thought it said:
JESUS IS GREEN.
She’s such a democrat.

#

C driving. D’oh! I stick my pen
In my shoe, then uncross my legs
and cry, “Where’d my pen go!”

#

Sometimes, being myopic is cool—
road detritus by the highway
looks for an instant
like a giant
tarantula
from a 50s monster movie.
Must be the influence
Of “Horror Hop.”

#

Even doing industrial driving,
1,000 miles a day, something
excellent: a Pony Express
station down in the woods—
I meditate upon it and our
western history…
very briefly.

#

4 cows in a field
beside 2 pigs
homegirls grazing.
#

Sleepy trucker
turns I-80
into a long embroidery
of lazy S’s.

#

Collapsed cabins.
All those ghosts
have hunched shoulders.

#

Vultures
circling
by the road, waiting
for me to give up
my soul,
but Cage The
Elephant are on the radio
& my pen’s still full
& I think
I won’t die yet.


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