"bedroll" poems
take a course and forget what that course meant
take a job with the code enforcement
make a code and brutally enforce it
lead a horse, don't know where that horse went
sleeping dogs have the sharpest teeth
with a hunger from the heart beneath
who better could ever deserve this land
government visionary missionary businessman
make up a law just to break it
put it to sleep and then you wake it
take away and over-take it
it's my bedroll, let me make it
take a bow your job is done so keep it
make a candlestick and try to leap it
pull the wool down then fleece it
lead the sheep, forget where the sheep went
Nov 2, 2021
Nov 2, 2021 at 3:43 AM UTC
Just off highway 80
I throw up my boy scout
puptent and zipper myself in tight.
mosquitoes are out in force this evening
I try to hide inside my bedroll but
it's too warm to lie playing dead,
hoping not to get bit by the blood *******
little monsters, reminds me of tax time.
Apr 14, 2011
Apr 14, 2011 at 9:35 AM UTC
Saguaros stood
like spiny-sentinels
as I sped along the Camino,
alone,
top down.
Warm winds &
tequila-breath
burned my shot-eyes
when I first spotted
the thumbing Lupita,
way south of Ensenada
on good 'ole 1.
Her graceful
toothy-smile
under her full lips
seemed gracious
as I pulled up
alongside her,
kicked the door open.
She hopped in
& we catapulted
with her hair streaming &
brown-skin shining
in the falling sun.
We hit high speeds
smiling
as we continued
south, driving
into the coming night.
Twinkling-stars
& static-filled
La Bamba-tunes
kept us company.
We discussed
sacred-mysteries
in broken languages,
later, counted
each others toes,
rubbed noses
in my bedroll.
In the morning,
she was gone
left me a note
& the ruffled rose
she had pinned
in her raven-black hair.
As I drove off
in a dreamy-state,
somewhat disappointed,
a spiraling one,
a lone black bird
trailed behind me,
I'm sure it was her.
Soon, she disappeared
from my rear view memory,
but never out of my mind.
Feb 7, 2014
Feb 7, 2014 at 10:39 AM UTC
I want to break loose with hell,
roll like a tumbleweed
across the endless plains,
blow through nameless towns,
become a sweeping rain.
I want to fall in love with
the Queen of Hearts,
bedroll with faithless tarts,
shoot lead lightning from
my itchy fingertips
& rustle cattle.
I want to live
my life on the run,
ride fast
like the wind
on a trusty steed,
hold up banks & rob trains,
guzzle red-eye whiskey
to **** my pain
& not end up etched
on an oaken tombstone,
somewhere unknown,
decaying under
the prairie sun.
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 8:59 PM UTC
unspared during my travels
prepared by an exchanging world
of appearances
i came to this place
at the base of
a hill of course fell
a whipped traveller i am
by the vital Spring weather
i am met
welcomed a night of shelter
led the way by a lace of monks
discreetly
i am put up
residence
bowed into an alcove
and left be
sun settles gloaming
bleeding out into the night
the night moves on
steeping
it plays on my solitude
a temple of awakening
freed from need of sleep
plush in the gloom
of this unfamiliar lodge
pulses lune from the lamp
calling me to something family
suckle
peculiar flares of incense
my heart at pace
gusted by the lungs
gushed with a nourishing charge
of remedy
i stand lightly
i take a stroll
timid
subtle bells
quake little tings
under a propelled circulation
engine utters
quivering the air
Sudden :
it buckles
yawn out from under a gallows
the spaces between the temple walls
drop away
fathomless theatre opens maw
barriers have dissipated
crumple
i am a mite short of distress
held
in keeping shallow
maintaining a sensible program
i give out breath hesitant...
and gratefully retrieve
i stand weakly
with care
this is temple
me, a guest
my travellers bed roll remains stowed :
i am a fool to be swallowed
a courtyard
compounds this pressed element of nature
i reached its edge
this building acts the amplifier
a spiritual device of development
bade by hemorrhaging darkness
i wade beyond any lamplight
each step taken when the tide pulls it
mottled perfumes now exhaust in punches
(powering from the baying boundaries)
look up
a royalty floods across the night sky
cropped by the yard rooves
chants and bells eddy about my ears
pants and tones mediate
worship hounds the clock
i finally do what is best
follow myself back the way
i make up my bed
(retire or
as a shade
i'll find my way between the walls
and flourish)
chuckle
i regain valued humor
i concentrate
close eyes and slow my heart once again
make peace in this temple of strobe
tomorrow i'll face agricultural land
and the sunlight
i'll continue my selfish travels
bedroll bound to my pack
my pack tight to my back
i shall weep and honour the departed
as i continue
this little i have learned
Jan 17, 2022
Jan 17, 2022 at 7:11 PM UTC
I rolled out and noticed
The bed across the room.
Empty.
The room was cool,
The unwashed everywhere,
And the door was open.
Usual.
My flights and landings were measured.
I bounded down.
Funny! His bedroll was not on the couch arm.
I searched.
Mammy's kettle whistled; her mug filled.
I heard the familiar tsk, the click of her teeth,
And the spoon circling and swirling
The teabag.
Through the window, over the picket fence
The maple tree was missing an opposing limb,
Resembling a cactus,
And I, soon to be four.
I once dangled from there,
Hearing Rossini pulsing through my neck
To my head,
Above the wheel ruts below.
Hmm. Not behind the couch.
The cupboard?
Under the hanging lace tablecloth?
The T.V. was dead.
The lasso missing.
His initialed boots gone.
I suppose I can loosen my knotted iodine neckerchief.
Hi-ho Silver.
Away.
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 9:09 PM UTC
I'm driving along the San Bernardino highway
it's hot
the sky is translucent brown
below me speeding past
are the clapboard and stucco houses
the untended palm trees
trash on the side of the pavement
brown weeds choking the berm
a city of lost hope
and strangled dreams
my exit is coming up
and I expect to find a disheveled man or two
standing on the side of the road
under the street signal
when the old man is not there selling flowers from plastic buckets
they always hold cardboard signs
with words written in black marker
though I never read them
all cardboard signs say something about god
I see many faces here
there is the one armed man
wearing matching red shorts, shirt and ***** ball cap
he has a ******** on his forehead
sunken eyes, unkempt beard, *****
he looks just like Charles Manson
crazed and desperate;
there is the young man listening to headphones, his bike against the fence;
and the aging cowboy leering under the brim of his leather hat
sometimes I see true desperation in the eyes of the lost
but none speak to me
like the young man with the distant stare
witnessing some tragedy
in the mist
his olive drab bedroll lays next to his feet
tied with a worn leather belt
his sign simply says "Oklahoma"
there's a vibe about him that says hope has sold him a little more of the highway
Aug 22, 2015
Aug 22, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
For what it's worth I've come to find that people and things ****** over make like lead pockets. Old business is just old business and yet the mouth stays sour, curdles at its ends like milk left out. I wash my hair and wash it again.
How do you **** a city? Not a short-change of ideas or institutions. A city. People, granite columns. Street lamps. Long lines of wooden benches. Car horns.
Bags and bags of bug-out gear: drop point knife; feather-stuffed bedroll; one dozen pouches, depositories. The **** is the escape.
The drop point.
Some thing in all of us wants a way out. It aches for freedom. Messy, nasty freedom, sweet as it is.
Dec 21, 2016
Dec 21, 2016 at 12:38 AM UTC
she folds her man back into
his neat lines
she folds her lies back into their
well defined places
she drew a bath and drown the fears
she drew blades and let loose with
a little light carnage
always good for the soul
always good for the complexion
her false faces placed neatly aside
in the small hours of night
tears would come
small and dainty
perfumed and practiced
the tears would mirror the tale
would mirror the woe that must have
been in her heroines heart
been in her heroines soul
the tears would flow picture perfect
captured in a small vessel
to be tasted later
to show her true felt sorrows
in the the dawns breaking mist
a face dimly perceived
a man she would have known
if she had not chosen this path
a man who should have saved her
from herself
and she runs up the battle flags
and the the guards fire
volley after volley
till the apparition is vanquished
till the man withdraws
she folds him neatly back into the box
from whence he came
and carefully locks it up again
lest he escape
i lay in the ruin of
a distant castle
on the scottish shore
warm in my bedroll
with another woman by my side
such a distant place
of darkness long forgotten
a place of such hates long left behind
May 11, 2013
May 11, 2013 at 11:03 PM UTC
for Daniel “Chappie” James, General USAF
and for the 332d Fighter Group
Being black in America
was the Original Catch,
so no one was surprised
by 22:
The segregated airstrips,
separate camps.
They did the jobs
they’d been trained to do.
Black ground crews kept them in the air;
black flight surgeons kept them alive;
the whole Group removed their headgear
when another pilot died.
They were known by their names:
“Ace” and “Lucky,”
“Sky-hawk Johnny,” “Mr. Death.”
And by their positions and planes.
Red Leader to Yellow Wing-man,
do you copy?
If you could find a fresh egg
you bought it and hid it
in your dopp-kit or your boot
until you could eat it alone.
On the night before a mission
you gave a buddy
your hiding-places
as solemnly
as a man dictating
his will.
There’s a chocolate bar
in my Bible;
my whiskey bottle
is inside my bedroll.
In beat-up Flying Tigers
that had seen action in Burma,
they shot down three German jets.
They were the only outfit
in the American Air Corps
to sink a destroyer
with fighter planes.
Fighter planes with names
like “By Request.”
Sometimes the radios
didn’t even work.
They called themselves
“Hell from Heaven.”
This Spookwaffe.
My father’s old friends.
It was always
maximum effort:
A whole squadron
of brother-men
raced across the tarmac
and mounted their planes.
My tent-mate was a guy named Starks.
The funny thing about me and Starks
was that my air mattress leaked,
and Starks’ didn’t.
Every time we went up,
I gave my mattress to Starks
and put his on my cot.
One day we were strafing a train.
Strafing’s bad news:
you have to fly so low and slow
you’re a pretty clear target.
My other wing-man and I
exhausted our ammunition and got out.
I recognized Starks
by his red tail
and his rudder’s trim-tabs.
He couldn’t pull up his nose.
He dived into the train
and bought the farm.
I found his chocolate,
three eggs, and a full fifth
of his hoarded-up whiskey.
I used his mattress
for the rest of my tour.
It still bothers me, sometimes:
I was sleeping
on his breath.
Jun 10, 2019
Jun 10, 2019 at 8:06 PM UTC