i crept out,
bleary-eyed and my body slightly humming
with a beautiful booze-induced hangover,
from beneath the rubble of the night just passed
and into a chair
in a lounge
in a tribal casino
nestled deep in the arid armpit canyon
where two desert mountain ranges met
east and south of los angeles.

i had played music.
i had made money.
i had drank until no one would buy me more.
and so, having slept off my inebriation
i tossed myself
into a sleek champagne-colored sedan,
a rental,
and prepared myself for
a dozen hour’s drive back home.
only a few short miles from the casino
i could only just make out
through a highway mirage
an angled turn in the road
a rocky ditch
and a towering palo blanco tree.
as i got closer the mirage evaporated,
and i saw a man,
struggling down in the ditch,
next to an overturned car from which smoke was writhing upward
and the airbags had recently deployed.

i felt a tingle in the air,
as I have many times before and since,
as if something spectacular
had just happened
but everything had settled down
by the time i got there.
the man’s head was angled down
attending to his task
and his face was a model of grit
and steely resolve.
close-cropped gray hair
peaked out from under
a straw hat with a tear in the crown and bent brim.
he gave off a moneyed vibration,
as if a well-funded 401k
could provide one with an extra plush
layer of aura.
his skin was brown as a walnut.
his clothes were fine, a polo shirt and slacks,
but roughed and creased,
and soiled with sweat and dust.
his shoes were missing,
only black dress socks
protected his feet from the general desert detritus and
the glass on the ground all around him,
comprised of broken bits of windshield or headlights,
that twinkled like little diamond studs as he switched stances
and angled around
the focus of his attention,
which was this:

he was trying, desperately and determinedly,
to wrench free
by hand
a duffel bag
from the car’s warped and twisted trunk.
he yanked and heaved
and swore under his breath
but the bag was unrelenting,
stuck fast
in that bent wreckage.
suddenly happening on this desert diorama,
this tableau,
this fucking scene,
the previous night’s final drops
of 50-weight booze
drained unceremoniously
from my brain pan.

mouth agape,
i braked,
slowed
and stopped the car.
i pressed a switch and my window rolled down
and i started to ask-
but before even a single word escaped,
he whirled around and yelled at me
from down in the ditch:

what’s the matter with you?
ain’t you ever seen
someone
tryin’ to live?