Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Walk the Earth


What was it that homeless man said in Kingman


I wouldn't have you choose this life for anything

I got grandkids your age and I would hate

for them to live out here


When the Asain tourists piled out of the fiery busses

on the way north to Vegas, that glinting rash where

one America is enshrined, my comrade and I stood off the lots

of truckstops and some men stared at her, snaggled

in sweaty breasts and greasy hair, beautiful


Without knowing anything, the dried apple faces of

maybe a million elderly women wanted to strip

me of my flesh and


men in pickups, themselves with nothing obvious to do

told me to make myself useful, Why don't you pull some weeds


when all it is that I want is I want my breakfast

of peanuts and chocolate milk

before the heat compresses the world today

again in a map of possible sanction

I will walk myself into in every single place

I want to go.


That I would lose my money as if it were air I breathe,

that shit would get so real at that point, I knew. That's

what you fear, the asking, that anyone would be kind

without a secret plan to fuck me or hit me and they

are out there like rabid strays, I admit, I know


The vast majority were simply indifferent, accelerating

like soda-weaned children with sore asses, their

minds clutching bright promises of their destination


But a woman picked us up once.


She was moving with her baby and played Christian

rock soft on the stereo of her vast 70's Olds and gave us

sugar- snap peas and, leaning back, I fell asleep next to

her chattering son, something I would never do

in the presence of most strangers in their cars


and I would only mention her because the absolute

most simple and quiet things happen and grab

the scruff of your gruddy, crusted neck

and tell you things about people you never hear


and with that understanding I come back to life

believing nothing of condemnation and

aspects of the beloved burn in everything