travelling in tracks

Gabby, is that you, yonder calming your trembling bones with cigarettes, leaned up against the lonely yellow light post downtown while the cinco de mayo tejano beats slide from bass strings onto the dance floor, the trumpets vibrating the vaquero crowds, gyrating the señorita's hips. No babe, this isn't you. No, this couldn't be you, Gabby, this woman sitting in silence at your dinner table awaiting your man, ever late, ever suspicious of his whereabouts, it couldn't be you letting your heart go cold in anticipation of another night of swarming, innocuous dreams. No darling Gabby, this can't be you sitting with your soul so quiet and still listening to the church ring those godawful bells, to the rooster crowing, the late night freight train burning through town, listening with smoke leaking from your mouth and your babies breathing soft in their cribs. Gabby, dear, you're not the one waiting for everybody else's day to start up, are you? I asked about you girl. My oh my, they said the moon gave you the name of gold, they said I could find you between the ripples of the stream burning diamond bright, so honey, you know I dressed in my finest, I left town with much owed, much promised and a hope that I won't falter with you, wishing I won't fuck up like the last time when you floated off with the wind. So dearest Gabby, I'm miles and miles out of town and freezing in the desert like a shepherdless fool. But I found you, eventually Gabby, I found you naked with your arms up and bracing the stars above you anext the old seminole canyon where it meets the rio grande, where no man has been in eons. I found you out here in the dark staring toward all civilization writhing and degenerate in a cage of electricity and concrete. Oh girl, you know I'm burning my clothes for us, flaming up them old native cave paintings to a dancing fever cos they ain't got nothin for us in that yonder eden, cos babe you need to come here anext to me, you need to let them heavens slip on past, let them city blues fester and rot where they be. Jus acome over here honey and keep warm and come morning we'll scale down these cliffsides and slip on into the river we'll slip on into the flow and let the old gal take us to where we need to be