On the Road, October 2001

[mnaz]

High desert basks in hot autumn sunshine,
but wrath dwells in every corner of stillness,
in miles of quiet defiles and bleached bones.
Jealous Gods close in, but Jah roots holds them off.

Dubbed-out roots drift from a tape deck,
a quiet pulse turned low to fill the expanse.
Reverb ricochets on slopes, ripples on bare rock and
bathes it in echo and fade, and I ride that pulse out
across the divide, a song blown open and transfigured.
The rootsman on a big beat earth; dubrock laid bare.

In the beginning was rock, and vibrations of rock,
the rolling big bass rumbling, big dog woofer grumbling.
Verily, reverb careens in the valley of the shadow of dusk
and empties in far canyons, from bright riffs at the shore
to subdued echoes in twilight, as Augustus Pablo's somber
melodica haunts a darkening ridge; the far east sound.

[mnaz]

Me too. S1 is the setting and "situation," S2 the experience, and S3 a "riff" on both of them.

[68degrees]

I might be tempted to start w/stanza 3…just seems logical.

68degrees

[mnaz]

I agree. The beginning had to come before the end and back again.

[WIREMAN]

hey u could second guess a poem to death and up being off the road.....stands as is

[mnaz]

Thanks Mark. It was a strange time being on the road in the weeks after 9-11-01. I had just uprooted myself to look for a new home, but no place felt like home. At times it felt like all I had was a little pickup truck and the dubrock desert.