In The Present

Trains, plains, busses, bicycles and my own two feet...

Cuffed and stuffed at the border, amazed in Cambodia, complacent in Thailand, and jailed in Tulsa.

Russian love on the run in D.C. and "scent of Mullet" air fresheners in Portland: a city with its toes dipped in another dimension.

HEY, W.T.O.! If you'd-a never show'd your ugly face in Seattle causing one of the largest riots ever, it'd still be a fun town...THANKS PRICK!

Snow in the Sierras, rain in the Rockies, trailers in the desert, and a grand ol' lady of a train station in Kansas City.

Unable to sleep from a bug caught in Vancouver, I witnessed our bus smear an owl right out of the cold drizzle of the pre-dawn night.

The weekend in Vegas with an old girlfriend is bought, payed for, set, and ready. It just need to happen and PLEASE, baby, don't be on the rag 'cause we got A LOT of catchin' up to do.

Close to the end of this big, long trip and there's a settling-down waiting for me in Colorado...If I want it.

It's sensible to think that one day I'll look in the corner of a closet at the beat-up backpack and decide to stop letting it go to waste.

D.C.

In the city of chiefs, everyone's in charge.
In the city of chiefs, from the gutter to the roof, it's pinkies up.
In the city of chiefs, everyone's on the make so everyone smiles on guard.
In the city of chiefs, flesh is brutalized in swanky digs away from the wives and sometimes along side them.
In the city of chiefs, children are brokered by fathers in nice jackets and perfect hair.
Whatever it takes to establish and maintain.
In the city of chiefs, all are shiny-shoed savages.

Voiceover Intro For Upcoming Documentary

11th Street. Route 66. This has got to be the most has-been stretch of Mother Road. Like the old bitch at the end of the bar with biscuit dough tits and a voice that makes James Earl Jones sound castratto. Rotting brick teeth and pavement skin pothole pocked stretches along the flabby rolling hills from east of Mingo Creek to the Arkansas River.

This is the trip two of us took through that vericose vein stagnant with poisonous automobile blood unable to flow from a dying heart....

Lords Of Hell

Pens of rage rippin' down the college ruled highways clear into the drunken night demanding satisfaction. No one is safe in the notebook towns reduced to page after page of desolate waste left in the wake of writers with fire in their guts and hearts hardened from the kiss of Hell.I for one, would give your children everything I have while I'm knifing you for your dirty socks. When you hear the roar of the vocal chord V-twin engines, you'd better

SIT DOWN

ZIP IT

AND PAY UP!!

Treasure Hunt

I've got a room in Bangkok that's so 007 that there's probably a cobra waiting in the closet, and when I look in the mirror that takes up the whole wall I see, in nice, brown eyes, a nineteen-year-old Okie boy who just joined the Navy in search of worth in these places. I found worth the other day watching children play in the killing fields. I thought, once, that worth was in the crotches of a dozen whores but the only worth was mine lessened. Revisiting these far away, humid places among ancient temples guarded by the likes of Naga and a truck-load of headless Budhas has given me clues to where the gold is only to have them stolen by the memory of a man's arm shot off in Panama. I have one more place to check: I'll bet there's a smile on the face of a homeless man as he sleeps on the green grass of Washington Square.

A Fragment

Her face had been cracked from the backside of a flat shovel whirled at her by the one man who was suposed to care the most. When I talked to her she had on a flannel shirt that didn't hide her perfect hips well. She thought it was cool that I spent my nights in the woods by the house I grew up in. I told her how I listened to unseen creatures making sounds in the Autumn night leaves. I told her about the feeling in my gut from being alone in the cold dark of November. She had a look on that beautiful broken face that told me she could relate. Her bus left with her on it before I could get her name but that is the way of the bus. Looks like I gave up more than I thought to be free.

Aspects Of The Rolling Life

Bus station! Bus station! Bus station!
Low-class people confused, trashbag luggage in lines on the floor in front of numbered doors.
Frustrated and tired, the disoriented bicker over bullshit.
Pot smoke wafts among the summer night dumpsters out back durring the 2am layover and here I stand observing this throng of humanity.
Cantonese curses slung loudly by the couple behind me at the bad Feng Shui of it all.
Mouthy-ass black girls from Atlanta in the back ceaslesly cracking wise.
How many knees are screaming in desperate need of straightening out?
Gravely-baratoned, bearded, and barefoot the bespectacled coot scoots through the Orlando station singing tunes like "Batman", "Good Morning America", and some kind of drunken, free-style doo wop.
How many mis-shapen, down-bred, and badly tattooed crackers will I make friends with tonight?
Down the twilight highway towards Chatanooga, Atlanta, and all points East
this freakshow in a box rolls on.

Lone Struggle

No way this cat's gonna find a correct direction.
Shirtless, worthless, schitzophrenic peugalist cries "YOU! YOU! YOU!" and dusts his knuckles off on a no-left-turn sign.
His grimy pants around his knees, he marches free, proud, loud as a mountain, and wrong as hell.
Visible ribs under scabby parchment testify to hunger strengthened by days of nutritious nothing.
All around him he's surrounded on all sides by goblins, monsters, government spies, alien infiltrators, robots diguised as meter maids, cameras strapped to flying girraffes,
and all I'm willing to do
is get on the other side of the street
and give
two tons of thanks.

Home Town

Sing in the rain to suckers other than you who tip outrageously for the sake of good service.
Don't obscenity in the milk of good fortune, just shoot the fucker and be alright with yourself like I am with a fistfull of Sharpies.
Be envious of ink-brush students who turn weeds into fields of ladies, waving and willing.
Walk around your town and eat the bricks and the trash and the sidewalk sofa with the cockroach icing and a side of rats.
After all this, when you're done walking all over your own back, you can hunker down in your corner of the cage and say,
"Maybe tomorrow I'll get myself measured to see if I fit through the bars."

Ticket

On the corner of Sutter and Powell. Tourists rage along the rails
of the trolly and throng along the sidewalks in fear of the iron-spined street.
Billboards are bigger, buildings are shinier, and shopping agendas
are strictly adhered to.
In all this I see her next to the trash
salvaging laces from shoes harvested from the bin. She, in dirty denim, clutches the plastic grocery sack that contains what she has for collateral.
I finish my eggs and she's long gone.
Those old shoes still sit on the bin telling everyone they don't have to sit in first-class
to fly.

Old Bread

Tomorrow I want to feed the birds old bread.
Old bread, old life.
New life in the light of a sunrise on another horizon.
I'll kneed and roll my past into loaves of old bread and feed it to the ducks.
I'll feel clean when they fly away with my failures.
If there's no sunshine, I'll ride 'till I find it.
If you find the sun always setting on you, remember that ducks never tire of
old bread.

An I'msorrium

For some reason the below entry won't edit correctly. That's why the verses are all run together. I'll keep trying every now and then to correct it.

Springtime Understandment

I wake up in a tent and ya won't hear me bitchin'

There's doughnuts and coffe at nine at the kitchen

Workin' real hard at sittin' in the sun.

Then I can rest when the day is done.

CHORUS

I rode my bicycle from Tulsa to here

and I don't even have enough for a beer

but bein' stuck in this town

ain't gettin' me down

'cause bein' homeless in Pueblo

suits me down to the ground.

Melting snow fills the river 'till brimmin'

whith water that's cool that I like to swim in.

My clothes are all clean and my face stays shaven

and I pity the suckers who spend the day slavin'.

CHORUS

Chow at eleven, prob'ly biscuits-n-gravy.

Sounds good to me 'cause it sure beats the Navy.

I'm not concerned with the future; I don't even sweat it.

'Cause bummin's good work when you can get it.

CHORUS

I busted my ass and that's how I got here

and I never had enough for any beer.

So I got on my bicycle and headed out west.

Forgot all my bills, the rent, and the rest.

CHORUS

'Cause bustin' your ass

if it's me that you ask

gets you one thing;

a busted ass!

CHORUS