thoughts on this weekend, 4-26-2009

israel, 1983, pt. I

all we had was a 1970 carta's holyland touring map. which was alright. by the looks of it, none of the roads we were on had been re-routed or re-paved for decades. it was hot, though. the map had, on the bottom, happy men in cartoon cars, windows down, flowers in their caps. and a woman, holding up the sun, long sandy hair, and a pale blue mini-skirt with matching shoes. we had landed in haifa and, after climbing the shalom meir tower, rented a car and drove east towards lake kinneret. a rule: if you are headed out, and nazareth is on the way to wherever you are headed, or slightly out of the way in a southernly direction, you are obliged to stop. nobody in the car was jewish, or had any objections to hanging around the town where jesus grew up, so we took a right at gilam and played the grateful dead on the open road.

if jack kerouac
had never learned how to read
he would have been
a car wash poet.
not able to write down
the songs he sings
while drying headlights,
he would have had to trust
the suit men in dark chevy's
(who steal his words and take them to their trysts)
and the family wives in station wagons
(who whisper his words while making love to their husbands)
a different kind of legend
without that endless scroll of open road
typeset and steady and unpuncuated
but inherited instead
father to son
mother to daughter
from the top lip to the bottom
through the teeth of lovers.
if jack kerouac had never learned to read.

we complicate
(don't complicate)
and tonight's color is black
which is simple
and fills up the space between the blankets
(and absorbs heat and light)
with the fanfare of funerals and the midnight sky
next to the moon.