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.