nobody gave you their seat  
your bag looks heavy
sagging on your round shoulder
with the weight
of twice and thrice told tales
none of those seat hoggers
likely cared to hear,  
in our penitent past
you
had to sit
in the rear  
perhaps your bag holds stories
that old, that bold,  
now you are front and center
tethered to the bus and
this world with a rubber cord,
a hanging loop, for those
who wait for simple seats
or their journey’s end
at some blurry stop,
where others climb on
with their own weights and woes  
and clasp the same old strap
that drew defiant blood,
the loop that once strangled
freedom’s cries,  but now
is only a handle to grab
for those
who have no seat
on the same old road

across the river
the trickle of what was once Grande
I see them, huddled in their adobe squares
as the sizzling sun settles quiescently
leaving them in shielded shadow

then come the cook fires,
for the maize, the frijoles,
smoking the night sky
filling their bellies, filling my eyes
with visions of them, some silent
some filled with mirth, and song  
all with hope or fear  

as the moon paints their crusty hillsides silver
some will lie with one another--some will join in longing,
liquid union, planting sweet sighed seeds of hope  

others, alone, will fall into dread dreams,
while winds weep and mix with coyote howls
a few will even hear the owls call their names  
though the gift of eternal darkness may yet be
light years from their wretched huts

I may be there
to see the sun rise again
and repeat life's one act play,
anon and anon, or something may close
my own tired eyes, before the glory of their suffering
can be played again

they do not speak  
mouths sutured shut  
their words, thoughts, appear on their skin  
like some curious cuneiform, deciphered not
by those who wield the scurrilous scalpels  
that maimed them  

they do not speak  
though their screams appear
as a rapacious rash of cocky consonants,
their whispers as smooth vowels
on their exposed hides      

they do not speak  
but hear the flapping of butterflies’ wings  
the blinking of a dead dogs’ eyes
and the sound stars made  
upon colossal collapse  

they do not speak
but emit eerie odors in fecund olfactory code  
“lesser beasts” read with feral snouts
and see on the breached breaths
the silenced try
to conceal    

they do not speak  
though they see the mocking mouths of their captors
and their words that fly through the air  
slicing through these mutes, as if
they were never there

how many cars have I owned,
an American male, yet I always
seem to travel by thumb,
hitching my way from A to B  
or unwittingly to C
with another at the wheel
when will I be driving
making my own signaled turns  
pressing the pedal to the floor
or screeching to a stop  
in the middle
of a frantic freeway
rush hour, just to see
if anybody knows I am there  
when they hear
the crushing crash

it is proper
for a man to lead in waltz
to begin this slow dance on the killing floor  
‘twas the mother taught me thus, perhaps all mothers  
impart this notion--you lead, 1,2,3,and 4; 1,2,3,and 4  
glide, don’t walk, in this grand circle
make the loop, while looking in her eyes    
you will hear the song only
so long, and the music will drift away,
a friend becoming a stranger
her eyes, once gazing at your face
like it was the first sunrise
witnessed by two footed creatures,
will close, perchance before yours
until then, lead, 1,2,3,and 4
while the melody yet
graces the ground

In the heat
and sweet stench
of an Idaho afternoon
I watched a life and death struggle
the latter won
leaving in its indifferent wake
a still life in black and white
flat and silent as moonless night

In the cool evening breeze
with only the faint hint of hay
in the holy air
I watched a life and death struggle
the former won
leaving in its indifferent wake
a still life in black and white
poised and ready for first sight

i don’t wait for nothin’
i see what’s comin’
ain’t no better than yesterday
when i made the mistake
of waitin’ for today
thinkin’ that familiar heartbreak
might take a sorry vacation
from my bones and soul
but today came
like some devil i knew
but couldn’t name
and here i be again
waitin’

feet and eyes  
these are all I use
       to find my way      
my ears have been open  
hearing the drums in the nascent night  
soon begging for morning light
for the sounds carry the solemn songs
of the slaughtered and enslaved  
I have masterfully managed to evade
but  
sometimes
their holy
imploring eyes
their maimed
sacred bodies  
come into two dimensional view, and  
I steal fleeting glances
but allow no chances for them
to take
human form  
I let them lay
in the fallow fields
among the bones
where their epitaphs
are written by the wind
where their last gasps are heard
only by other famished wanderers
who like I had feet and eyes
but whose drums in the night
were not untold tales
of the forgotten, the forlorn, the wretched
but death chants
just beyond the horizon
just over the edge of my
blind corpulent world  
where I could hear
their muted emaciated cries  
yet not have to see
their holy and hollow, dying eyes

"back in the day" is something
the masses have begun to say--they didn't hear,
five miles to school in the snow, uphill, both ways
nor did I, but I did hide in an arroyo from wicked desert sands,
crouching small with my notebook protecting my acne pocked face
the chosen (with fewer zits) poured from shiny clean station wagons,
their morning mothers’ smiles on their tails, sans the gray grit
from my lonely wilderness journey

still,
we got our first color TV that year,
and I got to see red blood from the first fallen
in that crazy Asian war...I can't remember what color it was
on the black and white, though it dried black on my jungle fatigues,
only five years later, when Sugar Ray from south side Chi-town died
in my arms, one of his skinny legs blown off by a mine
someone decided to put on that trail,
back in the day

Walter Cronkite told us it was all for naught, and we believed him
Johnny Carson still made laughs while anonymous millions made love
(now I hear tell Jay Leno is "back in the day," so who the hell was he?)
gas lines began to form, and Tricky **** tripped on his tongue,
one too many times, and even more chanted the mantra,
"back in the day"

decades passed,
with Iran holding hostages, Ronny Ray-Gun getting shot
and Clinton getting a *******, and the day finally came,
when we were told we were all the same, with some folks
named "Will and Grace" gracing the screen,
now that Walter and Johnny and Superman
retired to a place called obscurity,
or maybe Nebraska

I didn't know what to tell my straight kids, so I didn't
and that was OK, because their "back in the day" was 9/11
and it mattered not who was het or gay, because nobody had black and white anymore,
those tube filled dinosaurs now in some landfill, buried beneath a billion dead cell phones,
a trillion plastic bottles, the cyber art of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates,
and the dung of dogs who could stand the sterile scent
or who did not care

now we still say back in the day,
the view of that backward horizon different for all
I try hard not to wonder, what spell we are no longer under
when we can’t call someone a ***, or hang someone
who simply tries to vote, and of course I must duly note
when my PC is silenced in a newer pile of trash
it will not matter who was gay, or who says,
back in the day

we shared a camel
after my thumb stopped you
I took the first drag
before I handed it to you
you trusted my spit enough to share
and my road look enough
for me to be there,
in your new Olds Eighty-eight

you
had just come back,
from there
I was on my way,
I did not ask if that was why
your right hand had only *******
and a thumb, though you told me
of trying to close an APC hatch
and the AK-47 round that kept you
from doing magic tricks

when our smoke was half gone, we passed
the dying neon of a long dead bar
safe from its stench in your new smelling car
was then you asked
if I had “anything else to smoke”
a line from our riddled anthem,
we sang like nursery rhyme

I had what I had stuffed in my socks
since thumbs attracted cops as well
as wounded warriors in shiny new rides
I piggy lit the joint with the *** before
I crushed it in your fresh ash tray
now we were sharing our deepest breaths
and whatever else we could not forget

the **** was gone by the time
we reached the last city lights
and we, in our flying chariot,
zipped into the black desert night, it
was then your demons began to howl
maybe it was a full moon that called them out
to ride on its beams into the starry sky
where they could dance with other devils
and gods who had forsaken them, and you

I did not understand your moans, your tears
or the song you played on the eight track
that chanted about freedom which could not be bought or sold
or to whom you spoke when you wailed
you were sorry, sorry again and again,
I only knew they were ghosts
spirits kept at bay by the light of day
but there to haunt you in the dark
“Reggie, Big Mike and Cleveland”
all silent as you begged them
to forgive you for some simmering sin
I could not understand,
(not then in the desert dark,
though one day I would beseech other ghosts
to let me off the hook as well)

your cries did stop when you turned
onto a rutted desert road,
where you put the pedal to the floor
and the rocks pocked the undercarriage
like machine gun fire

you stopped,
and popped out the eight track
a half mile from highway 54
I lit another camel in the synovial silence
your tears kept streaming down your face
but you no longer called out to the ghosts, perhaps
left behind you on that black highway

I don’t know if they spoke to you
when I handed you the smoke, you did
look around, as if someone was there
before reaching over to open my door…

I did not ask why you were leaving me
with the moon and the stars and the sand,
so far from the lights and sound, or why
I could not feel my feet when
they touched the ground, the last thing
I saw was your dust filling the rumbling air
and the orange glow of the camel
flying through the blue night

I claim to know the wolf,
tracking scents in the high country  
though half truth requires I confess  
one has never been in my sight    
though in silent night,
in snow weighted pines
and fir, doubtless one
has eyed me in my folly    
I have seen the coyote  
scratching in the caliche  
on the stingy prairies,
crouching in the mesquite
ready for the ****,
whilst the hare hops by  
when chase ensues  
and mammal hearts race  
I have yet to see
the canine succeed  
the hare hides in Alice’s hole  
while the mangy hunter
settles for field mice  
or makes bargains with buzzards
while the flies yet crawl
on the ****