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Out in the Southwest I was

Terracotta patio four stories high

Two black metal chairs

Black metal table

Void of an ashtray

Void of an ice-cold drink colored lime green

Void of a second person

Void of a robot companion

There’s a view upon the valley of red rock thorns

Thick towers of sandstone polished by eons of metal sky gods

The sky is the color of perilous blue

Pure white clouds stretched thin on a Monday

Alone, smoking legal Mary Jane from Colorado

It’s quiet, like I’m the only man on a barren yet beautiful planet

Everything gets spacey and warm, and the sounds are all clotted psychedelic cream

I step back into the hotel room

A hotel in the middle of nowhere

Somewhere else…

Everyone I love lives somewhere else

Guess that one, win a prize

The room has an orange-sunshine tone about it

I sit on the edge of the bed facing the rectangular television

The screen is a black hole void

I stare at it

A blurry reflection of myself

Old, gray, goatish

I feel empty, yet full of life

Basking in aching and delicious solitude

I am always both things

No matter what it is

I’m warm and cold

I’m amped up and tired

I am hungry and full

Life can be like that

In a hotel room in the neverlands of the Southwest

The Netherlands

I recall flying over that country

Everything so straight and neat and clean green below

Canals, windmills, Dutch maidens in red dresses carrying buckets of water

Then down into Amsterdam

The chaos of the airport Schiphol

Having an episode of the nervous kind

Couldn’t breathe, panicked, shaking, feeling light-headed

Dismayed and delirious

Sonic ocean water eyes lady trying to keep me straight

But now I breathe

To the hotel walls

Quiet and silent

Then I wonder why the hotel is so high, as am I

I go back out onto the patio and look over the rail

It’s a deathtrap below, I decide

I step back in and go to the door

I can’t open it

I have no control over it

I start pounding on it

I’m screaming for help

No reply at all

I smoke more Mary Jane to calm my nerves

But then I realize it also makes me freak out

Because I’m that double droid

I walk back out onto the patio

I peer out upon the amazing landscape of ancient peace

I decide it’s okay living like this after all

I get fed and I get cleaned at the proper hours

Locked up and lonely and loving it

On some desert looney bin ship from the stars.