To the Underworld

Blue and bruised and basking in the desert sun
The highway bakes, black and blistering, in the desert sun
Trinkets and talismans on the dashboard
Coins, crosses, limestone
A necklace of bone beads
Postcard, Polaroid memories

Drive north, under the crust of the earth
Drive north to Mictlan
Graffiti on the gas station sign reads “ChAron”
As you give toll, turn onto the Highway Styx
Where women in vigil on the asphalt edge
Stand like black birches 
Their hair at their feet

The radio sings of liberation through music 
And how each moment transcends from past to future
A tremolo, trill, mordent
Those interstitials
And your copy of Bardo Thodol glows in the passenger seat
Dirt between its pages
Its hieroglyphs on state maps 
Its highways like veins
Its ink of the earth
It’s topographies in a southern tattoo parlor 
Inscribing incantations, invocations,
Incandescent, this atlas on your crumpled knees
Was written on you long ago
You find you know the way to go

Through the Lethe Interstate
The past bends below the horizon
Asphodel fields filled with wanderlust
Crossroads where restless souls loiter
Down into the canyon
Through shinay, milam, samtem,
Chikkai the tunnel with the bright light
Arching gates aching red
Offer glimpses of elysian fields
A distant paradise caught in the sunlight on the windshield

Road-tripping through the afterlife
Over the weave of trails trespassed
By Inanna, Heracles, Orpheus 
The contour of a raindrop on a mountain wall
The maze carved by a worm on the fallen branch
Lost spirits caught in the divots
But you have a compass over your heart
Your egg yolk buried under the house
Spells hung around your neck
Viaticum and gasoline 

Pass the scorpion-hearted man
Drive through the tunnel of day-long darkness
Your only company the sound of the silent radio
That sings when you dream yourself alive
You dream yourself dead
The difference just a matter 
of standing in between one arch and the other