Who Stole the Signpost?

I came out here to find Harry Partch

I drive the back roads
Mile markers ticking by
All the way from Barstow
To Big Rock Candy Mountain
Cigarettes grow on trees
Whiskey and soda bubble from rocks
I drove in vain

I look to see the shadow
Of Harry's face
In the open doors
Of the one graffiti free box car
In a mile long freight train
Parked in the Mojave
I looked in vain

South of San Clemente
I search the coast road
For the remains of a one pump diner
Where the honking horn
Sounds like a Zymo-Xyl
Harry's ghost is summoned to serve 5¢ gasoline
I sеarched in vain

On a scrub hill
I study the thump-thump-thumping
Of the last lost oil rig
In Los Angеles
I listen for the trace of a Chromelodeon
In the tinnitus of LAX
It must be drowned

Folks out here
Grind the parochial underfoot
And salt the ground
Where Artifice is King
The Abstract is the Thing
Who stole the signpost
From everywhere?