Odessa, Texas: Where Death Vacations Poem by Travis Bowden

i spent a week in Odessa. a Motel One room
visited by a depressed cocaine addict.
she told stories of her kids, while we lay
undressed searching for cigarettes on the floor.
room 124 was happy hour
for the prostitutes.

imagine a grown man afraid
of an empty bed.

where the street lights lay horizontal
i rode passanger seat, while Richard
drove us the hell out of there.
every two hours we pull to the side
of the road and write in a compositon book
about the week, or what we remember:

No Doz and Red Bull do not,
repeat, do not keep you awake very long.

and i pretened to sleep when we hit
Arizona time (just outside of Safford) . i repeat,
over sad songs on the radio, a poem i wrote
on her white wall in Autsin. her mother
scrubbed this away:

a poem written in 4/4 time, under highway lights
somewhere between Texas and Arizona:

maybe we're a few hours apart, maybe it's light here
when you're dark, but there are always a few moments
we can share,
taking a bath in the sunshine.