I was riding up from Los Angeles
With a pistol in the driver's glove box.
The sea was blue, the sand was dry
And the sun, seven shades past hot.
I was riding up past Castaic chasing
Some other person's dream -
That black sedan went round and round,
It was a dusty mean machine.
I was riding up, I was riding low
I was riding all day long.
I was riding hard, trying to make
The next border fast, but the
Road was hard and dry and
I sang a dead man's song.
Coyotes screamed that woman's
Scream, the rabbits begged for mercy
An owl might have flew, as I looked at you
And the bats escaped from heaven...
Or was it Paradise that we trucked through
As Chico escaped in the rear view mirror?
The buttes were red, my soul felt dead
And your sins were hidden if not forgotten.
There's not much to do under sky so blue
Except turn on the radio and dance.
Your sunglass eyes might have cried
But tears were out of the question.
The empty road stretched out like smoke
The white lines merged into one
The boulders fell, the waves would not tell
Me what else there was left to be unhidden.
Campground cutie, rest stop beauty,
Foghorns sounded my retreat,
Parking lot naps, dirt road shacks
Redwood forest fire marshall duty.
I put out the flames on another day
I doused the daily burning,
But others poured gas onto
Strange situations, and burnt up
The future way past any hope of saving.
Weed was hot, Yreka hotter
I rode west for some relief.
That tin can rattled over mountains,
It tore open on the passes
But it kept on truckin
As if we had some divine luck or
As if it was some beast in an ancient story.
It climbed those inclines, it descended those slopes
It kept on running, though everything was broke,
And much like me, it failed to see
When it was not able to keep up and running
And so we went on, dead battery, empty tank,
Busted wheels, earning our stripes
In some postscript yankee fable.
Standing looking out from Dismal Nitch
I remembered some ancient history,
A woman hiding with two men fighting
For some dream of creating colonial misery.
I might be unfair, after all, as I was standing there
Their war had been won and lost,
And not only that, by fate of birth
I fell on the bad guys side,
And I had benefited hugely,
I dropped a wild bloom into the grey water tomb
And said a quick thanks for succor and fate's mercy.
I kept heading north, until I hit gold, or at least some
Livable weather and country:
Weenie crews, parking lot blues, food boxes and
Always being dirty.
A small white church, dreams don't only get lost
They get hurt, and everybody is left mourning
For what might have been
And what was seen
On that road and on that journey.
