Far Across Anahuac

Far Across Anahuac

© Surazeus

2013 05 14

My hitchhiking trip in 1993.

It was twenty years ago today

we hitchhiked far across Anahuac,

and I played my guitar on city streets

and sang stories about human life.

We traveled far across Anahuac,

searching for the meaning of life,

Simon and George in a grunge-folk band

on a quest for truth across our land.

We left Seattle on a sunny day

and hitchhiked down a rainy highway

through the pine mountains of Oregon

to the rainbow hills around Shasta Peak.

We danced in a San Francisco Park,

smoking flowers woven in our hair,

rode a rusty coupe across Death Valley

and talked to serpents in Albuquerque.

I ate red mushrooms at Jemez Springs

and danced with fairies in yellow pines

then rode all night south to El Paso

and drank coffee in Ciudad Juarez.

We walked in Texas desert all night,

watching angels soar among stars,

and landed in jail with a cattle thief

then walked across a steel bridge at dawn.

We sang country in a semi-truck

then woke in a San Antonio park

on the first day I turned twenty-nine

and strolled crowded River Walk all day.

When our older selves gave us a ride

through the street fair in Austin at noon,

I sang Sounds of Silence to a crowd

who cheered nowhere else but in my head.

Rising like a dragon from waste land,

tall air traffic control tower spread

huge demon wings so I had to laugh

then wrote a poem in black book of dreams.

We slept under a Red River bridge

then strolled Oklahoma City streets

four years before Christian terrorist

bombed women and children for his god.

We returned to magic Jemez Springs

and I kissed cute fairy queen in snow,

walking nowhere in misty woods,

and listened to the howl of my heart.

We rode in a truck pulling a boat

through snow back to California hills,

and we parted ways on a lonely road

where I walked all night under stars.

I dreamed books by library hall three days

then rode a glass bus over treeless hills

where my grandma in a trailer house

took me hiking in Joshua Tree Park.

She bought me a brown suit teachers wear

and while I read Clan of the Cave Bear

I rode a greyhound bus along the coast

through Los Angeles to Seattle mist.

I slept in a hippy house twelve days,

singing lonesome ballads to cold stars

then lived in the upstairs office

of a political action committee.

I fell in love with a pretty blonde

while sitting alone in a grave yard,

reigning as Saturn, king of the dead

in a temple on a hill of flowers.

It was twenty years ago today

I hitchhiked far across Anahuac

Seattle to Mexico and back

on a vision quest for naked truth.

I found myself behind my own mask,

scribbling spells in a black book of dreams,

Surazeus one-man grunge-folk band

on a quest for truth across our land.