Emigrant

I've made so many trips from North to South and back up, mostly driving or riding, big rigs, Dodge vans, hitched one in a BMW once, 100 mph, 55 mph, sometimes by bus or rail, SF to LA, Stockton to San Bernardino, Oakland to Riverside, Richmond to Redlands, drug running, family shit, births and deaths, pit bulls, chihuahuas, marijuana, LSD, counterfeit bills, cop dodging, imagination wild like the past rumbling under your feet, six hours, ten hours, same gas station in Kettleman or Fresno or Paso Robles or Bakersfield or Mojave, interstate, highway, backroads, boulevards, clinging to the coast, higher than the mountain tops, through the bloodletting desert, malls and subdivisions, empty and angry, books, radio, spanish, english, vietnamese, bobby womack, husker du, buck owens, los tigres, infest, galeano read out loud by a half Peruvian woman a long ways back, blacktop, blown tires, engine dead, idle, roar, repeat.

Tonight will be no different. It's the same trip sometimes, ain't it? Driving down the state of California. Upon arrival, it can differ. This time will find me playing music with old friends and a big party to celebrate what's left of us, everyone and everything. The bullshit in the dark is unspoken and drowned in light beer, vision blurred from smoke in the eyes and whatever else. Excitement looms quietly until I'm there, until the radio picks up a familiar song, before it's all successfully one gargantuan advertisement for slow death. I'm still alive, motherfucker. Let the cucarachas scatter, pass the bottle and let me know what the fuck is up.

Not even sure how I'm getting back up but even the long walk's been done before. And that kind of thing doesn't matter as much as they say. They're always talking and I suppose these migrations I create for myself or the ones I'm dealt and have to handle, are to drown all that talking, the mindless noise, the dissonance of nonsense and stupidity, to murder it the best I can.
You know it takes a lot longer to get away than it used to. In a brief lifetime, I've seen the desert get farther away, the ocean become less sacred, the things we barely have be swindled out of our hands by the same old culprits, fattened and leisured and perpetually my enemy. But I still have to make the trip, work through, no thoughts, so that when I'm there, even for the crumb I'm offered, I can drink the swill and not be alone and know all that numb travel was worth something. Looking for my own noise. And if it don't sit well, nothing sticks, just empty breaths and hopeful that whatever engine it is, it don't break down. It's colder than a motherfucker, I'll take any ride.
Maybe Lalo knows a dude in Lodi who owes him money for a '73 El Camino, this was ten years ago but that asshole hasn't moved. He's been clean for years, he's good for it, just stop by, see if he has it, man. I can't leave, my P.O. would flip.

Anything to make the road warm up.