LA Freeway

Joebob Merritt

“If I can just get off of this L.A. freeway
Without gettin’ killed or caught
I’ll be down the road in a cloud of smoke
To some land I ain’t bought, bought, bought”

– Guy Clark

There is a place where I go to sea.
Where things once worn were.
I hear there, there is time.
And I make marks that resemble
The assemblies
That flash there like gold water birds.
Some are caught in my nets
Now songs in formed by these hands
Forming forms returning to seas
That I will not betray
By erasing the words of their lines

Afternoon clouds the East River clear
I, five, run by rains 
Circled in slate, fossil, and schist
Casting vows to forever return

House of gold gilt willows
Ocher veined greens 
Blue Sky 
Lightning dreams

Howus forever 
Never the same
Whirls of breath
Chase wealth to death

Canaries in the cold mine 
That is my mind
Fashioner of relics 
Sown threads of of pain

Howus Is
We who made 
These reflections 
Of desires unrestrained

The mythic hunger, 
Still ingrained
Homes,  Commodities, Tokens of Gain
Lost. The essence of what they could sustain—
Grafted grounds groan
Facades for fashion’s show
Memestreams 
Thrones owned

Existential dreads fuel the race,
Towards higher, more remote place
A hollow chase
Squandered grace….

Re-Creation forgotten in favor of funds
To fund
More And Better
And different Fun

Still Born Builts 
Framed of MythGame
Sawn of Wild Space
Houses whisper vain-glory and shame

Markers of a world
Lost in the grime of fame
Architects, builders, artists sweep in,
To feed the machine, of the Real E Con Scheme

The humble, the quiet, 
The small left behind,
Grains of Sand
The Temple is Time

Altars ever present
All falling down
Merrily Merrily Merrily
Round and Round

Creation a mirror of culture’s thirst,
For something larger,
Richer,
Ever more cursed.

This folly,
The lesion of gleam
Rots wrought
A dull blade, an unconscious scream

Of a root Re-Membered
Not for wealth’s display,
But for lives lived fully, 
Day by Day

This fiction sprouts a function
Relics of the boom
Bloom an Age
Were Boom is the scene of Doom

Amid the grift of glitters grip
A truth comes to ReClaim
Not built for Me or Fame
But for Us who ReSide

A shelter for soil
No where to hide.
No why to hide
No one hidden, all forgiven
A cabin in the woods, a castle, or scheme
Elk Run Road, carved from Elk Horn Dream
Haunted by the emptiness it can’t erase.
Power flexed in stone, wood, and stolen disgrace

Fantasy worlds
Grand and unreal,
Deep truths, too quiet to shout
Drowned by the noise 

Of what Life is not about

Joebob Merritt is the creative genius behind the ‘South Main’ enterprises where creative things happen. He has done epic-scale sculptures, including one for the Nevada ‘Burning Man’ event.