(20 minute poetry)

Past the barges easing along the canal, over the aqueduct,
******* the morning into my lungs,
flinging my satchel of schoolbooks because tomorrow never comes,

and then off to the islands for a pirate's day out,

tickling trout (the rainbow kind) lunch well deserved for the deserving mind.

I loved the river
the smell and the feel
the eels
the gulls
the turn of the tide

I took pride in it
knew every nook
every brook that loaned a little more strength to the length of it.

And then they altered it
sunk all my islands
dammed all the brooks

for ***** sake
can't they leave well enough alone?

The rivers not a home to be,
but it was a home for me
a long time ago.

We were so busy
killing time
unaware
that time was
killing us.

One more cut to trade
to keep
to scar and weep
one more bond
I made.

We hide them inside men
because 'big boys don't cry'
and the secrets that tie them
untie 'til they die
men.

Why then cut when a
handshake
will do?

And yet pain is a release from pain

(Oh Doctor Freud
won't you say that again)

But it's true and you know so,
at the first cut
you go slow
and deep
another bond you make
a scar and release.

I carry freight
interstate
eight
hauling gear.

I fear
noting
nothingness hoarded
the nights on my road.

Carrying a load out in
Fresno,
ok
all of this works if you know
Fresno
and I've seen things here
things that made me fear.

I've seen nothingness in the eyes of a lady, the queen of the maybe and maybe that should have been it, but **** happens and we have to deal with it.

There is
more to the ramblings of gamblers or ex drinkers who foam at the mouth for a beer,
and I've been here
sold my soul for a handful of quaaludes
in a back room with some dudes
I can't even remember.

But I remember the fear when the nothingness lit on my shoulder and you carry yourself even though you get older and the road out to Fresno is the same as the last road which was 4,000 years long,

So it seemed

And Lucy who never knew diamonds at all
only the rough hands of bad men in the crack dens of Harlem

until nothingness steamed in and screamed like a Stuka and you think to yourself
Jeez I am one crazy ******,
but you're still on the right side of
Interstate eight,
carrying fear like you carry the freight
hoping that no one will see you .

I wanna​ read a good book with a happy ending and that means me
spending some time in a chair, on the bottom stair, under the duvet or in the park where the local kids play.

So I search out a story about happiness, but the librarian a giantess who towers​ over me won't let me see the adult section,
'happiness is in children's​ books' and
with the way that she looks
I can quite believe her.

If only I could capture calligraphy and
make it a part of me to
write it as literature,
I can just picture it
a bit of
happiness
in
copperplate.