Her online dating profile said she was "Outdoorsy".
She asked if I wanted to go camping.
I told her, "No, I'm done camping."
I spent enough years sleeping outside,
and even more sleeping in the dirt.
It wasn't all bad.

I got to sleep with the stars and wake up with the sun.
once I woke up in the middle of a circle of deer.
I opened my eyes and the fawn looked at me, and I smiled.
She nodded at me, I swear to god she did.
Then she nudged her little ones awake, and they went off to find another spot so I could get ready for the day.

I've encountered ghosts along the rivers, and thieves among their banks.
I've never successfully started a fire without the aid of Gasoline,
    and it cost me the title of King of the Hobos one year.
Even as a homeless guy, I was mediocre.
I'm good at some things though.
I have references, I told her.

The next day, she deleted me from her favorites list.

One of the worst parts about post 9/11 airports is you can't meet your lovers at the gates anymore.
You can't run off a plane and embrace with a kiss like two poor folks who never went to etiquette school.
The kind of kiss that is more like two faces punching each other.
The kind of kiss that has traveled a thousand miles in bated anticipation.
We shuffle off the plane and head to the baggage claim.
The kids behind me were born after 9/11.
They will never understand Richard Gere and Julia Roberts brand of love.
A love where nothing else mattered but getting back into each other's arms.
That love is gone.  
We have to go through security first.
Take off your shoes, check your liver for spots, and make sure you aren't
    carrying anyone else's luggage.
Loose lips, sink ships.
Don't say anything that might give aid to the enemy.
Everyone has to make sacrifices.
Your love comes second.

The door is sealed, but voices ring out
And purple hearts still point the way.

There's a pipe in the corner that we're too afraid to pick up,
And microscopic devils reside in these sheets.

The screaming upstairs is getting louder,
And this won't be the first time I've tried to hurt her.

***** rigs with missing caps make up our mind,
The floor is the safest route here.

But this is home, and love resides here.

It shows itself among smelly blankets cuddled together in the
    midnight sun.
Or in the way permission is asked before saliva trades with water.
It smiles from behind broken skin and bruised eyes,
then saunters away to go spare change a meal.

Goldilocks stopped on red.
I was waiting for green.
Blue eyes met for a moment,
When she saw me for what I was.
A rabbit in wolf's fur.
A drifter with a college education.

My eyes were not so honest.
And she passed by,
With a smile and a wave.

I might have been the luckiest man on campus that day.
I may have been the last.

I woke last night in a sweat,
eyes gaped open and throat tight shut.
I awoke, from the American Dream.
My original fear was that I wouldn't know what was going on.
Upon waking, a new fear was confirmed.
The fear of knowing, and not having the power to speak.
My mouth had been sewn shut by the Patriot Acts of the powers that be.
My audience was rendered deaf as the Freedom of Speech, or even
   my freedom to speak was rendered obsolete in the aftermath of
        smoking towers.
Now we're living in a world of smoky mirrors and no one seems to
    remember that John Kerry was never against the war.
The hippies and the boomers raised the standard on the education /
    occupation link.
Now, most of the class of 03' is helping with a different sort of
    occupation, cause they don't have the money to be "progressive".
Plato once said, "Be wary of any enterprise requiring new clothes"
    and this sent me into a panic.

I don't want to march for war, and likewise for peace.
I see "regime change starts at home" stuck to the bumper of a black SUV
But when I asked that lady for change, she said she didn't have any.

Now I'm sitting on the sidewalk thinking about government, listening
   to Dylan and realizing no basement medicines will shut out new
       realizations.

And the thought crosses my mind:

"Maybe this is the way it's always been."

Poetry is a fickle thing to be in a relationship with.
It is a domineering lover who does not know the meaning of "later",
    but needs it done, "Now! Now! Now!"
As such, I have had to pull the car over on the side of an interstate,
    hit the 4-ways, and hope for the best.
All because I needed to scratch out some thoughts on love, because maybe
    I'm on to something.
Or I sit in my office, which is an un-insulated closet filled with disheveled
    thoughts and ******* that pre-dates my existence.
It is because of this chill in the air that most of my writing is done
    at the bar.
And with it, the worry that those drinks seep into my work more than
    they should.
But still lady poetry stays, if only to heckle that all my favorite writers
    were published posthumously.
I scoff at this and acknowledge that not a one amongst us as a species
    has died without regrets.
And in this, I too shall be no different.

I'm sitting in a strange man's house reading, "stranger in a strange land",
     and resisting the idea that I am another on a strain of poor
         marginalized Americans.

I'm a night janitor at an elementary school that goes unnamed.
The kids smile and run past without a second thought.
My boss doesn't ask questions for his own reasons, and I
    just want my story to be heard.

My girlfriend is curled up on the futon behind me, and I'm wondering
     how I got so lucky.
There's a Francisco De Goya **** hanging above this overtly
     post-modern desk, and I'm eating at the soup kitchen tomorrow.
I stay inside most days, wrapped in a blanket, not realizing until too
     late that it's actually warm, and that the AC is turned up way too high.

Perched under the cat's meow,
a **** lady flashes above my head.
With my hand on a smiley, and my eyes across the street,
I focus.
These streets are full of victims,
and she's not going to be one tonight.
Hurricane smiles squat next to me, and we're being eye-balled from
    across the street.

It's time to go home.

I gave a homeless man a quarter yesterday,
   and he threw it in the wishing well.
I went into the store and bought him a sandwich.
I brought it out to the wishing well, and sat down next to him.
He stared into the copper and silver waters and said,
"Thanks, but that wasn't my wish."

A veritable caricature of Jeremiah Johnson, I strung out on "truth"
     years ago.
Sitting amongst August sidewalks which sweat like a ***** in heat,
     I verbally assault passersby.
With a slurred battle cry of, "I can out merlot you any day!" I fall to
     my knees, unsure of which direction is up.
I try not to think of words like vertigo, or.....vertigo.
A honking car sounds life back into me, but the windows are tinted so
    I can't tell if I have it coming or not.
I flip em' the bird, just to be sure.

Where God's colors renew the horizon's edge, Salvation Soldiers
     aren't to be found.
And while prairie dogs find themselves squatters on their own land,
     upper crust artists show us where the day old bread is.
This is a good place to clear your head if ever there was one.
Where dusty markets lead down dusty roads, which lead right into
      the middle of where I want to be.
Free and Alone on the side of a mountain, where the sun don't
     apologize to me, and I don't have to explain myself to anyone else.

Some go ahead and call this God's Country.
But I call this place New Mexico.

Bus stop dreads stop me in my tracks because I'm too white to be coming
   around here.
My clothes are too ***** and my smile too honest.
I live a life of privilege that has nothing to do with the color of my skin or
   the "insufficient funds" in my bank account.
Idle time is the devil's plaything they say,
But the devil has always sent his own to take care of me.
So we just keep on walking, not to be judged by the race based politics of those who have no recognized power over us.