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.

Tucumcari

Route 66 was lonely
Except for the two of us
We stopped and took some photos
If we ever make a CD
One of those photos will be on the cover of it
A bumpy road in the middle of nowhere
turned the red car brown
It was veterans day
And the romantic desert sunset
was interrupted by the wild turkey
We talked to it
It responded
We laughed
Back at the cow camp
we put longhorn burgers on the grill
Except for the sparks from the fire
it was completely silent
I've never felt such peace before
I've never seen such a black sky before
Despite the warning signs of diamondback rattlesnakes
I slept like a baby
And when I woke up
I caught the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen
And once again
It was interrupted by
the Wild Turkey

Gobble, gobble

The days move on as you have done.
You spoke so often of leaving, I had to have you gone.

Run little man, run away again.
It's what you know. That's a lifestyle? That's not a life.

Run little man, run to your teepee.
On the road to ruin... never again to see me.

I thought I was your friend. I was never your foe.
I loved you so dearly, you will never know.

Really your loss, you will someday discover - I was your friend truly, you'll never find another - Like me.

Midnight back roads
Dark - insidious
Hungry for the intoxicated.
A monster comes out to
Prey on inebriated
Fellows.
Skiddings of tires,
Broken glass,
And red stains mark
Where the beast
Hunts
Road ****
A snack
and drivers
The main dish
The cycle is
Weekdays - innocents
Weekends - idiots