No words.
But no photos either, so I'll push out a few sentences.
I drove through West Texas to arrive by evening into Odessa, a town that seems to primarily serve employees of the surrounding oil fields. As I drove, the dust turned to rain, making a sludge of my windshield. I passed through some interesting looking deserted towns, but it was raining too hard to get any good photos.
As a consolation, I'm posting a poem a wrote a few years back. I've been seeing a lot of soldiers on leave, since El Paso is near a big military base. It feels relevant.
Digital Desert Camouflage
Three years ago the Armed Forces mailed me a card.
A "wish you were here" thing, requesting information.
I made my brother to take it to the mailbox.
Now I'm twenty one
and I can get drunk or die trying
and I see them everywhere -
in squads at airport bars,
staking claim to girls on Rush in Chicago,
and I think they call it ass or action,
not poontang like the heroes from films about
Vietnam. Man, those guys were great,
born to kill,
bad to the bone,
bomb the whales.
My dad says we aught to learn lessons
about intractable quagmires and the Tao,
but what am I saying?
This is America,
we've been busy starting schoolyard scuffles
and this evening at 9/8 central,
we're going back to back and taking ten paces.
It's will be a shit show. Absolutely don't miss it.
Digital camouflage disappears them in the desert,
but at Rush and State, they stick out like cow lick.
Half-smiles, raucous shouts, post-traumatic stress disorders
and absolutely I envy their dedication.
They’ve got so much moxy that it might literally kill them,
and that Jewish boy from the movies
looks as handsome in desert fatigues
as Brando did in jungle green in 1979.
So we'll have that for the years to come.
Surely, that will help.
Also, this.
Good night.
FORGET THE ALAMO
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