Southwestern Dis-United States of Memory*

Piñon smoke and sagebrush, voice of New Mexico night driving into an Arizona dawn rising over dreaming pueblos, low-ridden plazas, kivas and ruined cities’ rubble traced and highlighted by sunlight, Anglo angling into Aztec toward Zuni over arid zones… A to Z to El Dorado; a voice covers the high hills with a dusting of snow—every word hangs in the notes of the song: music to fall apart to, breakdown to, hurling the soul  into the bottomless well of psychotic nostalgia: *música de cavanga, falling into the depths. Melody pushing to the threshold of a bar and leaving you there with cash in your pocket and no ride home. The warmth inside beckons—you step across as the song fills, swells, intoxicates, then excavates the wall of the dam until it collapses. The fatal mistake: you read too much into the lyrics of shallow love songs. The deathwish beast of despair arises, the flooded plains dazzle your eyes, the Indian girl smiles on the rim of the grand canyon, the tattooed cholo pulls a knife in the trailer park, the dark waters under the bridge murmur and surge with regret; el río de Las Animas, Durango CO, Aztec calligraphy on the wall: Las Cruces, NM; Clifton, Morenci, Globe, AZ: stepped pyramids of copper tailings, gang-warred walls in fallen barrios covered in Chicano hieroglyphics, the ruined huts of shepherds and cowboys, pit-house dwellings’ flaked arrowheads and pottery fragments scattered forever in the coyote laugh of desert dusk. Crepuscular colors on the names of mountain ranges: Santa Catalina, Sangre de Cristo, Sandia, each one a separate sunset delirium—then you ride through the night to the city of palm trees and the orange-lined boulevards of Heaven.

The singer herself grew old but her YouTubes live forever.

Tried to visit Petrified Forest but my stomach said no
Didn't really mind it cause it didn't have much to show
We drove on route 40 and a hot guy kept following us
When he had waved 20 times we were like "Okay, enough!"
In Flagstaff I got to check in at my very first motel
It was way cooler than the Dallas hotel!
We wanted to get wasted so we went out to find a bar
Some Germans were playing pool, they couldn't speak English at all
Shots! Shots! Shots!
Two of them were actually quite hot.
After some drinks we lost each other in the dark
Thankfully both remembered were the car was parked
Hungover as **** we left for Grand Canyon
I was so excited to see it with my favorite companion
The size of it was greater than I had imagined it to be
and squirrels were practically climbing up my knee
An idiot lady had her dogs locked in the car
***** was lucky that I didn't have a crowbar
Still missed our turkey but deers were walking free
When the heat almost killed us it was time to leave
It was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced
But for Vegas we left to see something completely different!

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?
or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?
Have the gates of death been opened unto thee?
Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth?
declare if thou knowest it all.
       Job 38: 16-18

Oh that the desert were my dwelling place,
With only one fair spirit for my minister.
That I might forget the human race,
And hating no one, love her only.
       Lord Byron,Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

I walked alone into the waste
in search of rivers—not a taste
of water could I find
to liquidate my mind.

Under the sun in vanished lakes
alive with scorpions and snakes
I sought within my soul
her limpid watering hole.

The mogollón once hunted here
as piñon pines disclosed the deer
but now not even bones
remained among the stones.

Scattered beads and the odd spearhead
my visionary soul misled;
the moment was my home
and I was free to roam.

Burial caves of ash and silence
spoke in tones of bygone violence—
grinding stones lay broken:
her archeological token.

I found a *** within a niche
still balanced well, despite the pitch
as if the owner’s urn
awaited her return.

Amidst the fragments, free at last
in potsherd patterns of the past
I followed ancient streams
through arid zones and dreams.

Exploring a dry riverbed
unraveling her golden thread
while stepping off a ledge
descending from the edge,

I almost trod upon a snake
and quick adjustment had to make.
Reluctant viper-battler,
I flinched. It was a rattler.

As my right foot continued down
I saw the scales and dusty brown;
Mere inches from its head
the imprint of my tread!

The serpent was too cold and slow
to strike a poisoned morning blow
The sun still in the east—
I swerved and missed the beast.

The desert’s charm advanced from there;
She showed me sights I barely dare
to tell lest I sound singed . . .
My mind she so unhinged.

I stood before the gate of vision
rapt in shadowed indecision
gazing in the maw,
unsure of what I saw:

A ruined mineshaft’s empty grin
that mocked and whispered: “Come within.
The words of Job are here
in wisdom born of fear.”

Necropolis; a gaping  portal…
Feeling less than weakly mortal,
deep I stared inside;
allured yet terrified.

A passage to the depths of dread:
the Book of Job, the sleeping dead.
I barely now recall
yet understood it all…

Still thirsting through her arid land
divining truths in shifting sand
I ventured on in vain,
beseeching God to reign

The javelinas mocked my quest
beguiled me onward, further west
where Dutchmen hide their gold
and Apache tears are sold.

Her rainbow shades and distant mesas
silhouetted, paint her face as
nobly as the lands
her presence still commands.

Her beauty smiled: a virtual face
of glyphic pre-Columbian grace
decentralized desire
in sublimated fire…

She led me to the springs of life
my moonlight maid and desert wife;
my nights upon the mountains
in search of spectral fountains.

Ex-nomad of the mythic west
my unfound treasure now confessed;
her deserts had me smitten…
for her my poem’s written.

So,
My shirts are ragged and I
Drink too much on many occasions and I
Often reek of cigarettes and untold lies and I
Can't seem to keep myself steady for more than a minute but
I

Can write a love poem that'll make you go to pieces
And I
Will calculate the distance to the stars and find out how to launch you there
And I
Won't rest until I see it completed.

Sure, I
Can't control a sentence for more than a few words and I
Barely know my thoughts and I
Am a rambling, insecure mess and I
Don't know where I came from, but
I

Can help you find a home here amongst the shadows,
And bellow out your name so it infinitely echoes

Well,

I'm a bastion of something, to someone, I guess,
I just can't understand it.

I explain things all the time
To people with half-minded hearts and half-hearted minds,
Who might mean well but are conditioned
To think of nothing but themselves.

And yet I see myself in other people?

I'm a mercenary for a god I'm just inventing
And nobody will follow me, not yet
Because they're waiting out the seasons.

I'm a different person in a different body at the beginning of each new day,
I can't repeat myself.

I say nothing to my reflection as I morph,
Consistency wasn't a gift handed to me
(Much less, taught).

I'm a caricature of someone,
But yet, I don't know who.

So but what gender are you?

I don't know, the answers to that question hide behind a door that's closed and I can't seem to get it un-stuck.

So please,
Do not come up to me on the street and ask me if I give a ****, because I don't

My soul cannot be owned or bought
And in order to understand me, you need to forget all the binary lessons you've been taught.

So, but what gender are you?
Why don't you come up here and define me? Please, take a shot

Put this nervous, wandering soul back where it belongs - in a box

Oh to drag my shaking fingers
Through the cracked Arizona ground once more,
Your dark face staring back at me
Sitting upon the land your fathers promised you,
Promising to stand beside you
As you battle the salted waters.
Oh I would give it all back to you,
My sweet love from a land beyond.
This earth that rightfully belongs to you
And the cracks upon her face,
The junipers in their genorosity,
The moon, a goddess in all her radiance.
I would give it all back in a heartbeat,
Heavy as the thunders in monsoon.
I would give it all back to tell your fathers
That you never failed them,
Even when they came to you with guns.

They say that the Arizona trout is found
only in this state,
and I wonder if I had not found you
who else would have taken me in?
The sore problem is maybe
you have discovered me on accident
when there was someone else out there
that needed you instead.
I'm petrified at the thought
that if I swim away,
no one would ever find me again.

I once ended up
in the middle of Arizona
with nothing but a single cigarette
and a couple mints.
No phone, no money,
not even any shoes.
This one guy on a motorcycle
pulled over to the side of the road
where I stood, lost,
gave me a funny look
and then took off again.
I don't remember how I got there,
but the next morning I woke up in Phoenix
outside a gas station with
50 dollars in my pocket and a slip
of paper that read:
"keep it up, honey" on one side,
and a phone number on the other.
I never called.
I never even wondered
who had written it.

my lips try to hold
the lingering taste

of your
love you, love you, farewell

cactus holding water
from a rainfall

that happens only once
each year

I am thinking Arizona

when you suggest
we start seeing other horizons

tumbleweeds where words should be

sandy tongue apologies

dehydrated and hallucinating

I mistook you for an oasis

I'M IN ARIZONA!!!May not be on everyday sorry!!!....lol