Lonely Missour-uh I'm here
I made it I'm out from California
Came out to keep you company
But now I'm the one alone out in the fields of wheat
and I could cry me my own Mississippi or at least my own Lick Creek...
Lonely Missour-uh I was going vertigo atop those cliffs of California.
Turns out you keep good company...
except for me I'm draggin' my feet out in the heat
where the factories smell just like the road kill
where the blacktop scars run through fields
and up hills to where the lady of the Ozarks wears a shawl of Queen Anne's lace
with Mullen brows and poison ivy hair around her face
To the lady of the Ozarks standing sturdy on oak trees
with trousers made of butterfly weed ending past her knees
To where she cries out the black and current rivers
to where she cries out that old lick creek
where we row ourselves towards something like comfort
towards sunsets pallet fires and sleep....
Lonely Missour-uh. I hardly knew you,
see I'm from California. Except it's not you, but I who's alone,
and I was born there, but can it ever be a home?
I'm from families and stories more than places,
more from migrations, more from displacements...
until here I am the Imposter in a world of schemes and dreams and pain and wonder.
I could cry me that old Colorado,
I could cry me my own Klammath falls.
Shoot me down that Mullholland aqueduct back to my kinfolk,
‘Cause for now, that's where they are...
Lonely in California.