|
The evening is scattered on dawn's highway bleeding.
In the parking lot of a roadhouse somewhere in Nebraska
he walks up, his shirt open. I can see
the skin stretched over every one of his ribs,
like sarah wrap over guitar strings. He says
he's back from La Pére Lachaise
looking to go home to his LA woman.
"It's been thirty-five years, Jim" I say.
"She's moved on. LA is a whore.
She doesn't want you anymore."
He puffs up, makes himself look big
takes a drag from his cigarette, says, "I am the lizard king.
I can do anything." He climbs through the window into
shotgun graceful as a crane. His cigarette burns orange
in the sticky heat of the car.
He admits his death was a suicide,
not a hoax, not an accident. Mr. Mojo Risin'
tells me he put a toaster in his bathtub,
"Death was only going to happen once,
I didn't want to miss it."
I have to admit this makes sense,
but a fucking toaster, Jim?
"I was stoned," he offers in his defense,
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Outside Denver he tells me that love
cannot save me from my own fate. He has
dark glasses on, and I know he can't see
a goddamned thing, not the look on my face,
not the storm brewing in his own words.
"Why are you going back to LA, Morrison?
It can't save you."
"I'm interested in any activity that
appears to have no meaning.
That's the gateway to freedom."
I wonder if he thinks drinking is freedom.
I remember hearing him hiccup on "Five To One,"
wonder now if that was him rebelling.
"So, what does that say about your poetry?
Doesn't that have no meaning."
"Listen, listen, real poetry doesn't say anything;
it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors.
You can walk through anyone that suits you."
He leans forward, smiles with a mouth full of
gleaming Indian skulls.
"There are too many ghosts crowding your mind.
Let me drive," he demands. Navajo shamans
bleed from his mouth,
his breath stinks of peyote.
I pull over, he takes the wheel, chants
his poems over and over
and we drive through mountains
because it suits us.
—Chase Yurga-Bell, Roscommon, MI
|
