DREAMING I WAS DEAD

DREAMING I WAS DEAD


No respite on the road winding
through the moonlit Sierra pass,
I was that island in the mind's sea
shivering where I stood
beneath silhouette peaks
gauzed by the mist and the snow
angel's wings on the devil's cold
looming over my hang dog head
like angry granite ghosts.

The teamster no sooner picked me up
then warned me not to light that cigarette
explaining it was ICC regulations
forbidding passengers on commercial rigs
carrying interstate freight.

Traffic sparse and nothing
until the driver downshifted
on a steep grade and hell
was that a black man
lugging a boombox
as big as a coffin
up in the thin air
of that high country
wilderness, a wink
then nothing again
except for the runaway truck ramps
as we descended 4000 feet into Reno.

Windows frosted,
outside it was heat
as I climbed down
from the cab
into the mumbo jumbo
tangle of a railroad yard
carrying everything I owned
past the neon glow
of 24 hour wedding chapels,
ranch hand gambling dens
and the painted whores
who used to be pretty girls
out of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.

The bulls behind their badges
would not allow me a moments peace
when I'd doze off on benches along the main drag
"if you don't keep moving, we'll throw you in jail."

So bleary of eye I trudged on
ignoring the crap shoot groupies
and the loud drunk cowboys
throwing beer bottles at my head,
reaching in the sun slit dawn
the adjacent town of Sparks
where I crashed in a heap
just over the gravel boundary
my head on a rock
my feet on the shoulder
startled and awakened
by the reflection of the fireball sun
off the shiny bumper grill
of a Sparks police car
inches from my pimply chin.

Some how I dragged my weary bones out of Sparks
where my thumb or maybe my leg
caught the eye of a gay man traveling east
and with the only other option
the withering alkaline wastes
of the hellish Humboldt Sink
I knew not even the sight
of the devil behind the wheel
would have kept me out of that car.

I was too tired to stay awake
and too scared to nod off
shuddering at the fairy dream vision
of a coyote tiptoeing past my half sleep
as the days end painted a pastel dusk
along that raw renegade highway
across the Salt Flats of Utah to a small town
where I refused to share a motel bed
and that night I slipped out among the Mormons
and all I had to hold, sleep, and dream on
were the same moldy blankets
which I laid out again
on those shoulders of stone.

And I dreamed of California
where strangers would slow down
to give you a ride
and when they had no room
hand you a joint lit and sweet,
if we had the space, we'd offer a lift
but here's a high, for a makeup gift.

Wyoming eased on by
a mix of violet mountains
and flowered meadows
popping with smattering herds
of lazy cows grazing among
what remained of Conestoga wagon ruts
below the ridges decorated in the dull rust
of oil machines among the skeletons of steam pumps.

I made it to Nebraska
feeling miserable but
I was halfway home,
lucky to find a rest area
with real green grass
where I could doze off comfortably
between shoebox bathrooms
and idling ten wheelers
tucked in till the predawn dark
when I don't know, a prankster
or some bored tourist
moved an irrigation hose
and caused the sprinkler
to soak me awake and alive
after dreaming I was dead.

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
June 2010