California/ Sugar Mountain

We are asleep in a giant pink puffy padded chairs
In the steampunk mega vehicle
the last train out of Cleveland
for the night and maybe ever,
When I cough,
the moldy hack and wheeze
shakes your body
and wakes you up
and you look me in the eyes and say...

"Will things be better when we get to California?
and will we have food to eat and beer to drink?
and will my head stop hurting and will my back stop hurting?
and will my broken heart stop breaking and breaking and hurting and breaking?
and will we be happy and will we you still love me and can we finally forgive each other?

The snow is falling in crystaline sheets and a million fractal patterns
that slur and shift in the kailediscope of rainbow and white outside
camoflauge for the hordes of monsters that lurk there
the mountain yeti,
the irradiated mega-tundra wolf-man hybrid,
disembodied, frozen, frostbitten limbs
a deep cold and purple blue,
grasped and clutch.
As we travel,
rocket engines and brass flame train
clockwork masterpiece
soar across the bitter frozen hell
the blue and white winter beasts
the janky ice abominations
grab and shake,
and the train rocks and rattles
and we are tossed around
and we know we will die if we break down here
no one has ever escaped this holocaust they once called the midwest.

Foraging through endless nightmare carbon-cloned strip malls,
from starbucks to borders to linen and things and pier one
tgifridays walmart and pepboys,
at some point or another everyone will give in
be it to the nightmare cold,
the void and death wind,
that cut right through you
and carves you up
right to the bone
or the fat sacks,
the putulent maggot sick zombie people,
with roadmap varicose veins and oblong chins
sadllebags of flesh portruding, from their maggot filled gullets,
their eyes sewn shut, their mouths sewn closed,
that shambled the cold and consumed the few, the fools
that thought they could survive on their own.

And of course,
I have no answers to these questions of your's
these wills and wethers,
and it's so hard,
to believe in California
in this shitty fucking popsicle graveyard
with everything trying to kill us
in this scared chilly reality.

"Here is the deal with California."
I say to you conspiratorily
stroking your hair and feeding you benzos
kissing your neck, grabbing your thigh
Squeezing,
lulling you into a drugged out, sex crazed state of false composure.

I have seen this face on you before,
In the drivers seat of your now demolished 1994 cherry red and rust Honda Civic
vibrator stuffed to the knubbly base inside of you
venom laced super drugs coursing through your blood
a single tear rolling down your cheek
a tiny moan that escaping your pursed pink lips
interpreted as the symptoms of girlish panic and vulnerable confusion
rather than what they were truly,
an egoless explosion of cum and pulsing fuck
freefalling through fire
communicating with a perfect calm numbness beyond human understanding
that directs you to somehow say,
coherently and completly in charecter
"Yes officer, I will try and be more careful"
and"Thank you sir, I really am sorry"
as you drive away into the thick drunk night
the tires spiniing your voice rising to a scream against the wind
and behind seedy back room bars
in alleyways and at your younger sisteers quincieria
biting grabbing flailing punching gnashing pushing yelling pulling
at hair extensions and nipple rings, pink polerthane fingernails cracked and bleeding
nostril rosy with a halo of cocaine
and through hazy eyes
at three or four in the morning
brain crashing apocalyptically into the guardrails on the heroin freeway
stopping my heart
dying
as you grabbed the Naloxone from the medicine cabinet
filled the needle somehow
staggering hands shaking mid stride
and stuck it in my still bulging vein
pushed the plunger down
and fucked me
till I came, passed out, woke up
and came again

and so I know you are not looking for some logical truth
some restrained optimisim
to "hear it like it is",
you want lies, the good kind
the kind that snare themselves inside your brain
hook and won't let go
even when you know for sure they are not true
you still want to believe,
so it falls to me,
to either lie to you or break your heart
and I have never been much good at breaking your heart
so I say
"Here is the deal with California...

I grew up in the endless city
that the pilgrims called New England
and before it all fell down,
was sucked up, covered, destroyed
by the rising oceans
bombed once again for good measure
seeded with plague, rapists vandals, lawyers and roving packs of haters
demon warlords and pillaging nazi-viking armies.
it had already devolved into a hectic cluster of nonsense
and I had seen it all
from one tiny liberal arts college to another
where tattooed hipsters all majored in bullshit
in being rich and white
in knowing that band, having read that book
in turning a million into a million and one
and claiming to be a self made millionaire,
in high rise condominiums,
the suburbs,
filled with this human kindling
was just waiting
the fires and riots, the angry mobs
that tore these places to the ground
they were, of course, inevitable

and I have lived
in the mostly abandoned inner cities
through the Southwest, New York, Detroit and Florida
and gone hungry and sick
in abandoned, dilapidated buildings
whose rent, swallowed my entire paycheck in a single gulp
from my job, which I begged for
prostrated myself in the submissive position
in front of fat mongrel managers
with headdresses of bone, necklaces of teeth
that spat on me, beat me,
told me I was unworthy

And I finally escaped
first on foot from Georgia
to the idiot inbred south
pursued by melting faces of mutant hillbillies
brainwashed into a fever pitch by vitriolic sermons and bad moonshine
nonsensically accusing me of being both a chink and a nigger
a faggot and an immoral polygamist fornicator
being decreed for my allegiance to science
saved, at last in my darkest hour
in the frosty Appalachian tips of North Carolina
by the elven hippies
holed up in Asheville
whose perfect earthen beauty
enchanted even the most cynical, coldest heart
and whose music filled their ivy colored halls
their wooden tree houses,
the fire pink mountain flower hills
and brought on the rain, the sun
and filled the moon with milk white light
wrapping the mountain city with its' porcelain white pillars

Next I crept, secretly
through the militant hordes of Mississippi
the Pirate bands of Louisiana
and swam to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico
to Old New Orleans
which has gone backwards in time
since it was crushed by the tidal wave
and the Mississippi river ran glowing red
blood from the eviscerated gulf stream
mixing with the radioactive backwash from the killing fields in Colorado
where the inhabitants have adopted the style of the 1920's
and whose undead bodies float and bob
dressed in petticoats, bowler hats, red velvet dresses and alligator shoes
from one submerged prohibition gin joint and titty bar to another
on Bourbon and Frenchmen and all through the quarter
to every seedy bar in the Marigny and all down to the Bywater
and danced
dizzy, lifeless jitterbugs and Charlestons
and drink hard liquor and smoke chains of cigarettes from long slender holders,
faces blue, filter fish nibbling, hungrily at holes in heads
and jagged scars that will never heal
drowning their sorrows in already drowned bodies
and I walked with the Saturday parade
uptown and through the garden district
zoot soots and Mardi-Gras Indians
the base drum sending out pulsing shockwaves and ripples
the brass section spiting tiny foam jets into the ears of the crowd
they arch and rain into exposed meat holes
purple green mush shaking and quivering
in the murky brown marsh

and I have murdered my way across West Texas
where the american dream sets with the sun
and by the light of one million candle campfires on the horizon
seen herds of mustachioed cowboys
and canvas soldiers with copper stars
murdering and raping the natives
setting the earth on fire
building barbed wire landmine death fields
that tore apart anything alive
so foolish as to cross the cursed land
which was screwed, fucked, violated
in ways the cheapest whore has never imagined
penetrated mercilessly
until it spilt its' black liquid guts
in great cum shot bursts
in the face of the world
on the dirt, the ocean and the very poor
the salt of the Earth
who shivered and died
were set on fire and burnt over
turned to charred nothing crisps
while these rapers and pillagers
drink glasses of blood red champagne
eat twenty thousand dollar a spoon oil and dirt caviar
on massive porcelain thrones
on the eighteenth hole of their personal golf courses
green lawns lying starkly in contrast to the cracked barren desert,
and forced
chinks, nigger, spick, white trash, hillbillies and poor ass cracker
to build the rails we are riding right now
straight into the spinal column
then the fractured drug addled nervous system
and finally the poison, broken heart of America
the thing they call California"

"California, California, California" I am saying
it is just a made up word but it sounds so beautiful
and you are purring this along with me
your melting gooey body gropes mindlessly at my chest
your furry hippie brain
trapped in a world between orgasms and dreams
and I am thinking about when we were kids
before your mom died and you started your life as a traveling prostitute
before I crushed my leg in the rodeo and killed that man in a bar fight
before I went on the run and took to life on the road.
the abandoned box car, the back seat of the greyhound bus, the floor of a conversion van
when we would lie together on your parents living room floor
listening to their parents ancient hi-fi record machine
vintage speakers popping and cracking
wavy vinyl record undulating against the needle
listening to Neil Young's voice as he sang about a perfect place
where you were always happy
Sugar Mountain
and you were so young, so stupid and naive
you believed it was a real place
and you would ask me
stretched out on the shag rug
kissing my neck, pulling my hair
if things would be perfect when we got to Sugar Mountain
if I would love you forever when we got there
and i would say yes
but of course, I left as soon as I could
and so I never had to tell you
that there is no Sugar Mountain
and that everyone is dead in California

that maybe once there was a place
an all dancing, sun shining, warm weather world
covered in weed and patchouli and flashing rainbow l.e.d. lights
where shaman and genies live psychedelic visions
and dreadlocked, free loving, crusty flower children
watched Jerry Garcia, reborn in a burst of smoke onstage
reunited with the entire original lineup of the Grateful Dead
Jimmy Hendrix playing an electric Wa-Wa solo in the sky, on a guitar made of stars
lasers, pouring out of his eyes as he weeped lysergic tears
on the crowded throngs, the endless crush of naked flesh
and drugs and sweat and tears and sex
and endless free love
or failing that love for a few dollars,
a song on your guitar or a bag of weed

but this place is gone now
as gone as everywhere else
cracked like glass in the heat of the bombs, the sun, the volcanic eruptions
covered in dirt and soot and sediment
and concrete from a million earthquakes
demolished in race riots
pillaged by chinese invaders
the few survivors forced out on to the isthmus
that once was San-Francisco
all naked, all sweating, all full of drugs and cum
and all fucking and cuddling all ready to die together
as the tsunami wall rose
deep in the ocean and plunged
its fat engorged cock, down into the cunt of the bay
pressed them down, down, down, flat
washed them away, carried them to their graves
with their brothers and sisters in Atlantis and New Orleans

"would it help you to know this?"
I keep murmuring this to myself as I begin to devour all the drugs
I do not think it would
your tiny little electro-shocked brain,
your beautiful, innocent, soulless, child's mind
can not conceive of a world without California
without Sugar Mountain

and so the lightning is striking,
the anthrax bombs are crackling all around
and mushroom clouds race across the horizon like highway lights in the night
the Earth is moaning and the sea is rising
and I am rapidly devouring all the drugs
taking fistfuls of whatever I can
shoving them in my mouth as fast as I can
the train is shaking against the super cooled rails
and you, somehow, impossibly
are still asleep

I am devouring all the drugs
as fast as I can
the train is shaking
and we are descending finally into the endless black hole
but I will not bother you
and maybe, when you wake up you'll be happy
home at last in California
high as fuck on top of Sugar mountain