Caesar

I watched the waves pile for three years
before I decided that a bag and a ticket
were needed for the here and now
of life.
I left in a car and the desert
she opened to me like a flash of powder,
the ghost of an afterimage,
or the eclipse you must not watch.

Quiet is a concept I have to notice
or it never exists. And on the road
is where I feel we'll see.
I grab Caesar and say: we'll see.

Veni...

I drive through the desert
in the time between 7 and 8
almost night when the sun
is shooting down and at an angle to blind, illuminate
red fires in both directions. I keep on the road,
ignore the blaze, thumb the radio and
see:

Caesar in the back, light on his open book and face.
Toolin' down the freeway, my hand on the wheel and the truck on auto, I heard
you mutter against this free life
and the pur my Chevy makes,
a noise like a screeching banshee at our ankles.
I think to tell you
you can't work and live,

but I can't phrase it
when I see two signs: a titty bar ad and behind it a blank white sign
with GOD written in fat black,
the pure background may be heaven I figure,
obscured by a woman more Venus than Mary
until the one second we are past one and before the next.
Again, no words are in me for you but I laugh, you stop writing
long enough to catch my eye.
When the sun lowers more, you climb up and we listen to the radio.

Vidi...

Their town is dead.
Brick buildings in line, a heat haze
though the sun is out of my eyes and I long
for a viridian collage to assault
me, beat me, the desert saying I want to choke on water
and leaves together and it infects. It holds me.
Caesar is gone, into the bar, whose neon sign
licks my brain and imprints xXx to jag
dance in my mind, and I enter the dark and join the dead.

Vici...

We never left.
To Caesar or from Caesar I heard a voice say
--die for me, die and live
and just like that I felt
relief.