Mary Sands

California Trip, 1997

Indianapolis May, goodbye raceway
Macmillan Publishing and cake,
thanks for all the fish.

I mean, I hated fishing and
when Jim caught an albino catfish
in that murky pond I made him throw it back
running after him as he showed his friends
up the hill.

"But it's rare!"

That's my point.

Thanks for all the letters
for the tapes to travel with:
Smiths, "When you cycled by,
here began all my dreams."

I would rather not go back to the old house.

Thanks Kate and Bryce and Fran
Dean and Deb and Keith
Kris and Gail and Angelique.
Where did you all end up?

Hey, I met a cool guy in California,

bon voyage!

***

Highway 74
goes on and on
with the days of Travis Bickle
gray odelay Beck.
Hey, Ventura highway
at the edge of the continent
where stars were huge back in February.

Fuck that, just get me out of Indiana!

Illinois isn't much better.
It's still cold in this Taurus
where is the sun?
Flakes of clouds dripple
while my cat shifts-mews in the backseat.

In the trunk: old computer, conch shells.
Paintings of birds, Japanese gardens,
arrowheads, Navajo bowls

and Namur, beautiful Namur
that my grandfather framed.

Shit, I'm still in Illinois;
talk about flat steel nipples on cows,
more like dead cornfields
shapeshifting ghosts in clouds
more cows and lonely factories
where inside gloved hands do things
I don't even want to know about.

They're making something
on a conveyer belt, I bet,
that's going to end up on a shelf at K-Mart.

***

I don't find the arches in St. Louis.
How can one miss them? Think
about how Miles Davis went off heroin
at his dad's farmhouse somewhere around here.

Move north on construction lanes,
bypass St. Louis but still caught in slow lunch-moving
businesspeople catering to concrete shrines
and burgers. Oh yeah, dude, Bon Jovi.

GAG ME WITH A SPOON.
I hate Bon Jovi.

Hey, there's the sun!

Find a place to eat on the North Side.
Dine in McDonald's parking lot
lazy yellow stripes on ground,
man it's gotta be 80 degrees all of a sudden.
I feel lost, why am I here on this side of town
when where I'm going is the other way?--
But none of that matters
because the cat is free for a minute
(won't pee on the grass like a dog, though)
and it's warm enough to take off the Indiana Jacket.

Traverse the maze, get out of town.

The Ozarks
Sweet.
Green and lush like a lime milkshake
so cool and
Sweet.

Tom Joad would have loved this cake,
on and on through jade rolling hills
and big buttery leaves
sprinkling dappled sunshine through
blue paperbacks and lilies.

Rivers of love.

You can suck on Missouri like
a long, slow lollipop,
the kind when you were a child
and sugar dripped down your knees
while you waited in line with a lea-stitched towel
under chlorine vapors at the town swimming pool,
north side of Milligan Park.

Palomino horse sticks its head over the fence.

Hobo shags down the road.

Years later: Hey, Josh, baby.

Ozarks are sweet enough to be buried in,
hills like big bosoms of moss
and frantic pink wildflowers.

But soon enough, you're just out of there.

***

Red Oklahoma
The road turns red
blood of nature, blood of ten million
sex maniacs who postured this way,
dry clay road and bluffs venture the red.

Mud.

You can go faster here. Speed up.
Highway 44 is cool and flat.
You can serve a big meal on it,
or hire a midwife so that it
gives birth to mountains.

The first feelings of being West, but not Far West--
cowboy land, not tropics with perfumes and gold.
It's rugged and raw here, like a saddle.

Two for Tuesday. Ozzy Osbourne.
Switch station.
Day Tripper. Beatles. Fade.

The Damned.

I'll be the mail you'll be the guard
I'll be the ink on your season ticket card
I'll be the rubbish you'll be the bin
I'll be the paint on the sign if you'll be the tin

Just for you, here's a love song.

Wonder what he's doing today. Mr. foliage man
under Santa Ana skies, where winds tread
over The Aspens
and a bird sits outside his window.
Maybe he's jacking off again under those sheets
that have geometric tans and greens
or listening to his music in Orange County.
Haha, hey Secret Asian Man.

You could say I lost my sense of direction.

If I ever lost my faith in you...

The road is a metaphor for life, my friend skye once said.

Sleep at Days Inn, Oklahoma City
tornado in night blows down sign,
slept right through it. Up at 5 a.m.,
12 more driving hours today.

McDonalds and Taco Bell gift certificates
get stale, but that's all I got.

Leave OK to beat another storm
marching haunts from the East,
but I left that storm
and maybe it's following me. I outdrive it
and
red skies, red road, red meadows of pleasure
at 85 mph.

Texas is a strangled lobster
in a steaming pot of blue vapor
something by Stanley Kubrick
subdirected by Pee Wee Herman and Farmer Brown.
Shamrock, McLean, Groom, Conway, Armadillo, Bushland, Vega, Adrian
hello, good bye.

I don't stop here.

***

Outline of mountains
ride that fat funk train to groove town, baby

oh yeah.

New Mexico from flat and red to lush
Ponderosa Pines falling off peaks that jet up
straight and full, those milky taut pancakes
upsurged and covered with cartoon mud.

Perfection.

The town of Moriarty reminds me of Dean Moriarty
and his father, who we never met.

Albuquerque has a decent radio station,
the best yet, and finally I'm in Laguna. Nightfall.
Don't see well at night, but keep going til Gallup.

The West is the Best. Breathe in that dewy air,
that tender jasmine and watch the mountains grow
shadows and miner's tales.

Call my love, drink small bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon,
lay head on pillow. He's a day away now.
Forget for a moment that this is real, and sleep.

Take off at a place that I read about once,
with slow soft breath and wooden fences.
Dew grass and mountains circling the
points from here to eternity,
not counting the sky they graze

which is really the punch
whatever that means.

Up and down Arizona ranges
truckers on the shoulders and slow lanes
breathing heavily.

POSSIBILITY OF FALLING ROCKS

DEER XING

Miserlou by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones
plays and fades out quickly.

Sanders, Chambers, Painted Desert.
The world has changed drastically
since Indiana. Flipping through a few
pages of National Geographic, no stops
at the apple pie places or little dives.
Too scared to stop, hands
tighten on wheel at each decline, incline.

You can't fall off mountains, you fool!

Stop at a Taco Bell Express in the mountains.
Talk to bikers about trips; they're going
somewhere and I am going somewhere
but the bathroom has no toilet paper.

Follow sign that says Route 66
down to a pasture and broken fence
where the road is faded and blank
not like the words that have ridden it.

Hello Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda.
And Jack Nicholson, you ol' bugger you!

Hello Native American billboards,
home-made kachina dolls $9.95,
holy shit, did you construct enough signs--

and the rest of the highway goes back in time
to the ocean where I was born.

***

Down into desert.
Sleepy towns are for Beck and mutations
and finding a Denny's when nothing else is open
even in dusty mid-mornings:

when the road is full of nails,
garbage pails and darkened jails
and their tongues are full of heartless tales
that drain on you

Little town, coffee decaf and strawberries
sun so bright in half-blinded window it
pushes me out. Where was I?

Passed Flagstaff an hour ago or more.
Yavapi, rock, and sagebrush.
Seligman in rearview mirror.
Mouth dry, day drive, noonish. California ahead.

Don't know this little town
but it seems familiar.

In Needles, two tires replaced.
Refill oil, gas, water, air.
Sit and wait beneath 114-degree palm tree
because inside is a murky place
that smells like gearheads and chalk.
Fat man overcharged me, but I'm just
a girl driving through the desert and still have hours to go.

Called my guy,
told him how the border patrol looked for fruit and veggies,
and asked if I had a pet. Yeah. So?

In California are strange dry hills
with black shadow reflections of clouds,
tiny prickly pear and big Saguaro,
tumbleweeds that dust across the road,
yellow call boxes, and nothingness.

Windmill doohookies bring electricity:
you start seeing their wings blow around,
tons of them on the hills and think you're on Mars
when really you're just moving from no-man's land to desert cities.
Miles across Southern Mojave,
signs to Essex, Danby, Cadiz, Amboy...

Bagdad! I've gone far.

Up to Ludlow and finally Barstow--

time to head down on the 15.
This is the real apple, the one you munch.

San Bernadino and Riverside cows stink
and it's getting hot in here.

Cajon pass is the entranceway to Los Angeles;
rush hour traffic on multiple lanes down
arduous bends and shakes
people speed and you grip the wheel.

Find the 91 and then the 55. Go South.

Mountains end, and valleys begin,
sprawling cities and towns--
remember first time flying into LAX at night.
A million orange lights bumped the ocean below.
Now the lights are off; the ocean is out there.

Orange county is full of palms and stucco,
flowers fucking everywhere, and big leafy
protuberances hiding archways
and I think everyone's having sex in all this buzz.

Paul Weller: Uh-huh Oh-Yeh! Uh-huh Oh-Yeh!
Always there to confuse and fool ya.

That's life-defining. I can't wait to see Jack.

Call him on a pay phone when I get off the 55
and (don't take Main, take Macarthur) dial his
all-too familiar number from a Weinerschnitzel.

He's like, "Hello, you're already here?"

"Yeah."

"Meet you at the gate."

Shaky, completing the trip by parking at The Aspens.

He's just gotten out of the shower. We kiss.

A bevel of palms paves the walk up to my new home
and a petal falls.

People take their fat fluffy cats for walks here.

***

Five years later, on my own again.

Things change.

Hell, that wasn't a trip, that was a journey
but all is best in the end.

These things are seldom what they seem.
-Bad Religion