Withering Ego in the Inland Empire

We love being obscure, without that who are we?

The rest stop along I-40,

Arizona,

before the Colorado,

and the grades,

seems like an outpost

on Mars;

Haviland

2040

Retrograde;

Intergalactic martian post,

Docking station,

Before solar system

Departure.

Beep. Beep.

You are now leaving Earth,

headed for Hotel California.

-----

The Lord's southwestern rest stop:

We get out and look around,

they’ve got truckers here,

walking their small dogs.

Lots of varicose veins, prancing about

and an Arby’s bag takes to the wind.

What is this place?

The chocolate mountains.

Scraggily desert bushes out there.

Whole trains, from front to end,

Can be seen snaking around.

Only a west coast phenomenon;

East coast is too scrunched and vegetated.

It’s wide open out here -

wide open in the heart

and mind

and space.

They’ve got call boxes out here,

In case your horny,

or lost an eye.

We travel through here.

Time doesn’t matter,

We just need daylight.

Two ladies from North Carolina get out of their car:

“What kind of questions does the patrol ask?”

“What?”

“Up at the checkpoint?”

“They want to know if you have fruit.”

“What for?”

And off we go, again.

Emaciated souls wandering,

waiting for the world -

this world, no less -

to hand us over something.

We head to the Lord’s southwestern throne room:

His throne sits,

perched

Between two cactuses

Across from what they call salvation mountain.

Nothing but bombs are dropped here.

The irony.

Maybe not, though.

The Salton Sea winks at us:

God, we say, exasperated. -- And so, the voice speaks.

It has nothing for us.

We have drunk all its water.

The wine is gone. -- “Get out of here, you two!”

Our youth is lost.

There is no song.

The cicadas chirp, -- “I have commanded it, be gone!”

...But the voice is like echoes pinging off the wall,

who is listening?

No one listens to that guy anymore,

This commodified world knows best, it assumes.

But the damn flowers are wilting,

That dude has no teeth.

Why’s it so damn hot?

It’s a desert out here.

Give me a vase

or a pot,

Fill it full of water,

Maybe that’ll hit the spot -

Or even the parking lot,

Where all the van dwellers sweat and

poop in buckets,

and complain about the heat,

Along the Salton Sea.

We’ve kissed Will Rogers:

No more, no less,

then what we already have

is all we need. But never bless.

We sit in the sand and watch the Pacific.

We talk about life, like poets:

We will all be waiting and waiting

if the world opens up for us -

dead with our corpses holding the cigarette still burning,

little orange ember flickering,

setting the street on fire,

which burns everybody up.

Why not give others a chance?

Get out of their way, some say.

But I say, take a break, friend.

Then get back to it.

Pick it up again.

Try again.

yeah, try again

But who poured gasoline on the concrete?

“Saw an old car come through,

must have had a leak,” she said.

You’ll make every excuse.

the world is a tinder box for those

with brittle, vying egos.

The burning is the resentment.

The resentment that you will never achieve the goal.

And then, the end:

Homeward bound, I-10.

The voice of the collective many says very little.

To the narcissist anyway.

And the voice who was afforded a say in the past -

who inspired so many -

has been relegated to the trash.

Once looked upon,

only for their advantage;

the vanguards of ego have shown up,

eyes glittering,

teeth seething,

figuring they should be the ones to be celebrated.

Your droopy condescending eyes

Sardonic

are the warlords of Earth.

And you don’t care, o prideful you.

That’s right.

Yeah, that’s right, I said it.

We're outta here, forget it.