Elvis Revisited - John Field

Wyoming, August l6th, 1977, heading west

On Interstate 80 trying to get some place real.

Behind me the amnesia of all those sad little towns,

I've just passed through, way off in the distance

The Rockies and not much else around

Except a whole lot of breathing room.

Big sky country until dusk shuts it down,

Heaven and earth come together

In the nowhere out there and I tag along

Behind the glowing altar of my dashboard

With nothing better to do than feel instant empathy

For each infectious little bug

That measles my windshield.

Minutes, perhaps an hour later

I switch on the radio and have its static in my ears

When a disc jockey informs me that Elvis is dead

Discovered unresponsive on his bathroom floor.

Let's go down, death said and he did,

Long live the king in stately quietude.

For a moment his face is a photograph

Pinned against the wrong side of my eyes,

His grin already history, an instant artifact.

Then the DJ plays "Heartbreak Hotel"

And what a sad feeling I have

When his voice comes back without him,

For goodness sake, from the underworld

Just below this one or wherever he's gone

They'll open him up, I figure,

Because this has to be an inside job.

Then they'll say a few words at his funeral

And the next day Colonel Parker's traveling show

Will check out of Graceland and move on

To the next Podunk town with a hot itch

For its brand new ringmaster, his whip and his chair.

My thoughts blink at the glare, remember instead

The songs he sang on the Ed Sullivan Show

The night death touched his life so little

I believed his music would live forever.

Years later fame turned his mind into a balancing act

He kept falling off and turned his body into a spike

He pounded with pills instead of a hammer,

His mouth wide open for another one

Each time he stumbled around on the stage

Like a bloated Liberace imitator,

Spending and spending himself for his fans

As if there were no such thing as a reckoning.

About this time I can't tell

Which side of the white line I'm on

And need company fast

Because what a fever it is making do

With a few scraggly shrubs by the side of the road

And a scattering of bullet-blasted Burma Shave signs.

Wyoming, I love you! Bright lights ahead,

An all-night truck-stop with dozens of big rigs

Idling in its parking lot tidy in parallel rows.

Beneath a haze of cigarette smoke

I order coffee, a burger, basket of fries,

Slab of blueberry pie a-la mode.

Then I strike up a conversation with the fellow

Sitting next to me. "Did you hear the news?" I ask.

He makes a sabbath of his face and nods his head.

After oblivion, guilty pleasure. Why not?

In the corner a jukebox holds its silence

Until my dime bails Elvis out of his cell.

Then it gets very excited as it lowers its tiny prick

Into the lyrics of “Jailhouse Rock"

and begins spinning the king's voice

Round and round on its haunted merry-go-round

Like a crazy Wurlitzer god making love to a ghost

While we sit at the counter, smoke Luckies

And laugh at each other's jokes

The way good actors always do

To help us forget why we mourn.

Editor's note: John's poems are always growing, never static and so with Elvis' story, John has applied more brush strokes. An earlier version in the progression was published on Elvis' birthday, January 8, 2015.