Morning cloud cover shredded.
Long hours of naked,
Sun-raked sky.
Cosmos acetylene torch
welds the seam between earth and air.
Blue waves of Mojave August
rolling down.
After hell-hot night of meth-twitch,
hallucinogenic insomnia,
Freddy is still restless.
Spends most the day
leaving boot prints
In sponge-like asphalt,
bridge across sand, rock and cactus.
36 hours without sleep,
concocting deluded ideas
about last minute reconciliation
but Tina's bus is in L.A. by now...
Back at the pay-by-the-week,
the mirror above the bed
documents her disappearance.
An ashtray filled with half smoked
lipstick stained cigarettes,
empty bottles of rot-gut red,
abandoned detective novels,
(too many for a suitcase)
a broken-necked Spanish guitar.
Objects reflecting 50watt soft white,
distortions in beveled glass.
Late afternoon,
Pentecostal preacher in a red Taurus
leaves the highway
pulls up next to Freddy.
"Need a ride?"
Head down,
eyes locked on his own shadow,
Freddy continues walking/no answer.
"Heat like this can kill a man"
the preacher says.
Freddy grins like a rabid dog,
"you really think so?"
