Iowa…was there ever a place as mysterious at three in the mornin’ as Iowa…drivin’ ‘cross it under pitch black skies and the smell of sulfer fillin’ the air…no-one else out on the road except the occasional truck driver pullin’ his weight through small towns with one stop light and a closed gas station on it’s edge…not even a cop car could be spotted…boys at home sleepin’ next to their wives in a spoon position…arms wrapped ’round tight while children down the hall dream of leavin’ one day for Chicago…Minneapolis…or some other place…any other place but Iowa…

I drove into Iowa from St.louis awhile back with no meds on me… or in my system…just runnin’ down the road in a blind ambition…manic…wantin’ to see somethin’ that no one else had ever seen before in America…a different kind of romanticism…some kind of mysticism out on the highways…followin’ the yellow lines…speedin’ along in my Dodge Avenger…the one the ex-wife was still makin’ payments on…radio turned to low number stations playin’ jazz out of southern Illinois…gospel in northern Missouri…and old alternative rock-n-roll as I approached Iowa…a state where writers come to dream and farmers have faced nightmares…months of drought…sometimes weeks of too much rain…but the soil always bounced back…it healed…producing corn…rows and rows and rows of the silky green plants reachin’ the sky above…you could smell it in the night air along with the sulfer and the cow shit…or…maybe it was just my imagination…

The mornin’ sun shows up around six…breakin’ like an egg over easy into my windshield…keys in the ignition…windows rolled down and the radio playin an Amos Lee song as I open the door and make my way to the men’s room at the rest area…truckers zippin’ by on the inner state…chilly mornin’ air fillin’ my lungs…I stretch my body and raise my arms above my head…leanin’ side to side with a tooth brush and a tube of toothpaste in my hands…I needed water…

And the bahtroom smells like a giant urinal cake…an old man sittin’ in the stall singin’ a George Jones song to himself as I splash my face with water and slick back my black hair…hearing the old man giggling out loud and talkin’…sayin’ things like…,They’re waitin’ for me in Phoenix…, and…,The lonely road is the only road I know…,made me wonder if I was hearin’ myself twenty years ahead…some old lonely guy out on the road with no-one to love or to be loved…just me by myself…made me wonder…and heart broken…cryin’ a little bit as I brushed my yellow teeth and spit out blood…a red…green and white mixture there in the sink…I splashed my face with water one more time…I was ready to start my day…my new adventure…in Iowa…