1.
I'm left falling asleep with tear
beads
dropping from eyelash to cheek
creating mini rivers down my beard
This anarchist break from Maine
all too sad and silly some days
playing gin-rummy on stoops across this
country
for money is a fair bet
of weather or not we will make it
chance in the deck not the dealer
or the holder.
I find myself humming the time away
between the silences we share are
laughs
giggles and glints of dust in the
setting sun
dancing around our faces
all too sweaty and dirty and darkening
with the days
as they pass we loose track of the
months
unfolding before us
lost souls stirring in this complex
world
we are running like children playing
cops and robbers
in the meridian of blood
are we thieves in the night?
as we live off of dumpster dives for
bread
and tea from strangers?
the more rusted and earthen we look
the more people smile and hand us
change
sooo, so strange
I don't remember his name but his face
is as clear as a kodachrome dream
weathered short brown mop atop a face
mid fifties and graying
I'm guessing his sanity was about the
same as ours
he giggled endlessly behind us on a bus
through Texas
kept asking each time we stopped for a
smoke break
“is this LA”?
Nope I say
I woke up to see him standing and
staring all too alone
holding his broken Camel butt between
his lips
lost
scooped up in his tan insulated Carhart
bibs
he is a dust bowl era man
far from home
I don't recall when he failed to get
back on the bus
but I remembered his haunted lost look
when he wasn't there anymore
The people you observe on the road
are skin sacks crammed full of life
bitter and broken in a sea of memories
none specific, they all seem to be
improvising
and living in lies to hide along the
road
foreign air acts like a holistic
medicine
to cover up the cracks and the caverns
of beatings and breaks underneath their
existence
Waking up in a town north of the
Mexican border
a line of officers shined us with flash
lights
in the early morning frost
asking if each passenger was an
American citizen
this westward caravan's like a dream
of pearl gun grips, rattle snakes,
ghost towns
and land that seems to unravel forever
across the scape of cactus and sand,
oil rigs
drinkers in dusters, bars blinking dim
lit and
seemingly deserted
this country is smaller and bigger at
the same time
for two mid twenties children
running with the bandits
in the last pale light of the west
Wherever we are going
I don't know
each time we drift to sleep we end up
away
running with the wild horses you see
all throughout the west
2.
Louisiana
boasted black and white men
alike,
mainly maintaining that Jesus
brought
them from the prisons
to
the palace.
by
night and day
stranger's
getting stranger.
Our
tan Carhart bib overalled friend,
kept
asking if we were in Huston yet?
giggling
to himself as we approached
major
cities along the way.
I
cried when I noticed the lonely
in
his blank stare
late
in the dead city deep south,
waiting
for another caravan to pack up.
My
pitch forked figure
with
crusted eyes
sleeps
only by day
a
half hour or so at a time
weary
of pickpockets and
thieves
along the highway drone
Mile
upon mile
crows
casting glass
along
a Nevada pit stop where
a
mess of a mother,
ghetto
and greasy
gave
blow jobs out in a
McDonald's
bathroom
for
a Happy Meal.
Food
for her
young
daughter.
The
night before, claiming assault
to
a man sound asleep, so she
could
swing a set of seats
to
watch over her kin
Jason
Asselin's twin lost his lady
and
baby and headed back to the bay
homeless
once again,
rambling
in a southern drawl,
that
lit up the dark early morning sky
his
stale breath of smoke
outside
the station of, god knows where.
Greyhounds
bring all the likes
gang
members, homeless, crazies, babies,
families
from Tulsa, Heroin addicted,
strung
out sad eyes, liver-lost grease Goth's
and
a slue of everything else
saddle
stitched for the road
dead
set on chasing the sun.
There
is a freedom in the lack of things we own
we
traveled roadside and ditch, pitching tents
forever
hitching west, penniless...a choice we chose,
but
many along side us, road on, choice-less
we
shared the little we had,
apples
and Nutella
and
enjoyed grumbling bellies
making
it all the better to be dreaming
of
sewing seeds
sleeping
on a beach in Santa Cruz,
with
all the merry bums
and
druggies
The
last light in the west over Monterey bay
gave
us breath, remembering the
cold
days back east, where for months
the
sun is so far lost
behind
clouds and fog, that we forget
the
warmth and the rain, awaiting us
only
a few fortnights away.
The
felons and freaks, train hoppers and oil men,
immigrant
families, arrested mid day
ripped
from a bus, busted for transporting
Illegal's
and drugs. The deserts of the West
don't
give much. Life doesn't hide
in
the hills of West Texas, home to a hell
without
a skyline or border.
Chasing
these strips of tar trapping our map
routing
us like a black widowed
mycelium,
running in a spiral, outward
wishing
a direction or place would
call
itself home for us
in
search of a beacon to begin anew
and
forget the broken past, that promised
only
more heartache.
We
are still young runaways from anywhere
out-here,
hiding in the movement that keeps us
still,
chancing the weight on our hearts with the lack
of
such burdens on our backs, a breath past death
and
a reason to find out,
what
lies in truth
may
only be found
where
no one can find you.
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