"truckee" poems
Midnight on I 80
passing by Truckee
heading East
towards the lights of old Reno.
The snow starts blowing
around Floristan,
Sierra Nevada
winter
following me
all the way down.
I'm looking for a big truck
to
get behind.
Riding on the crying road
every
Sunday night.
Wondering
if I am creating
gratitude or regrets
for
my future self's past.
What am I doing?
I left you on a January night
chasing love
in a blue moon light.
Stuck between desire
and
staying home.
I don't know what's true
what's true with me
what's true with you.
I'm stuck behind this wheel
snowy anxiety
ringing on through,
what am I doing?
what are you doing?
Creating
gratitude or regrets
for
your future self.
Will the adjustment bureau
come on through?
Or
will
I like you
make it all up as I go along
with the window steaming up,
Art Bell on the radio
Coast to Coast
the sounds of ghosts.
Will I hate myself
for
being my self
or
look back with eyes
sparkling with gratitude
and
the wonder of who I was
I doubt it,
don't you?
Now as I write this poem
with my life
together and asunder
will I look
back with gratitude
or regret?
As I hit Fourth Street
the clouds have parted
stars are shining through,
I'm no longer crying
the crying road is done.
I still do not know what I have begun.
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 3:03 PM UTC
The skies are blue and the clouds look fluffy.
The air is crisp and the water is chilling.
The mountains appear to touch the sky
and the leaves are rich shades of green, red, and orange.
I walked along out of service train tracks that cut through this mountain. Literally, through it.
The tunnels started on the West Shore of Donner Lake and followed the ridge of the mountain all the way to Truckee. I hiked a half a mile from the highway up to an opening in the tunnel. For a few hundred yards the tunnel was riddled with broken bottles and worthless graffiti. As I walked further in, the garbage began to disappear and the graffiti became thoughtful, artful. It became darker and darker until I could only see the circle illuminated by my pin flashlight. On one spot of the wall someone had written the entire first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. Someone had drawn a white line. Just a white line and I was so intrigued by it. People wrote stories of the lives. "Im kevin, my gf broke up w me now im gay" or "Im pat. i got dmt and then i got aids" and "im kaylene. thats it."
Someone sprayed a **** pipe on the wall of the tunnel and it was green. They paid very good attention to the crystals in the bowl and the smoke rising from it. A young girl with black hair had her lips on the pipe and she was breathing in. Written under it was "Remember, remember, the 5th of November."
Some one else had sprayed a cowboy. One half of him was black outlined with white and gray detail and the other half was white outlined with gray and black detail. Next to it was written "Childe Roland to the dark tower come."
Some one else had sprayed a devil. He was red with pure black eyes. It was signed "Self Portrait."
Halfway through there was a drain and creepily enough a faint light was shining from underneath the thick grates. Above it some one wrote "I stashed my **** here for three years."
Under that someone had wrote "Gateway to hell."
The rocks jutted out in straight lines.
Some were smooth and others rough.
The mountains cleansed me.
They wiped away some of the grime
this small city has polluted me with.
The crisp air exfolliated some of the
smoke from my lungs and the water
pulled the dirt from my skin
and the hike massaged my sore
feet and the graffiti swept through
one eyeball and took all the garbage
in my brain out through the other
eyeball. The mountains saved me.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 12:00 AM UTC
once
my daddy took me to a clearing,
a shrouded cedar and pine
hideaway,
overlooking the distant mountain range,
sticking up like morning hair.
it was sunny,
flowers sprung out of the ground at our feet and
fought their way through the
grass.
he led me to a stump,
"this is where i write when i cant think."
i nodded and took it all in
with open eyes and a
wide mouth, hanging like a trapdoor.
it was beautiful;
the mountains in the distance creating in my
wild imagination
castles like the ones where giants lived,
in the stories that spilled from his lips.
he opened his arms wide like wings
at the highest part of the arching hill,
he closed his eyes and the breeze tousled
his wheat hair, flowers softly caressing his
ankles.
the scruff above his lip and laying on his chin
shined gold in the drifting daylight sun.
he took a deep breath
a humongous breath;
deeper than any i could ever take.
*"this is where i go when i cant
breathe."*
you could hear the echoes of swift trains,
screaming past in the valley
from
Truckee,
carrying chills along with it
every time i heard them.
i never liked that sound.
it was a cacophony of shrieks.
he held my hand
with fingers ten thousand oceans larger than
mine,
and took me into the thickest, deepest part of the woods
where it was dark
and the smell of pine viciously attacked your nostrils,
like a rabid dog.
he let go of my hand,
i let it fall dejectedly to my side.
he slumped down into a pile near the roots of the tree,
a different man:
tired and trying.
he sighed.
*"this is where i go to sleep,
when your mother has had enough of
me."*
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 1:51 AM UTC
and it’s cold outside
on the dock
the dog is chasing mosquitoes
and I am drinking cheap wine
I wonder if my mother knew I’d be
as ugly as the world
black and blue and green
but mostly black
and I think back to high school
when I aced calculus
and made out with Ashley in the back of her Jetta
but I’ve always hated math
and Ashley died drunk driving her Jetta, I think
the dog and I head back up to the cabin
for another bottle of wine
as I walk up the steps
I can hear Hank Williams on the Silvertone
“my bucket’s got a hole in in it
my bucket’s got a hole in it”
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 2:37 PM UTC
You were born on the wrong side of the tracks
But now we're both on the train
******** about our overpriced hotdogs.
They ran out of ketchup.
A grandmother three rows down is
Screaming obscenities at her grandchildren
Because they won't be quiet.
Four more hours.
But there is no way I can play another
Game of cards. I've lost every one.
Out my window
Miles of poverty become miles of fields
In an alternating pattern of bleakness and desolation.
The lady across from me
Draws her curtain closed.
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 11:47 PM UTC
Dreams
Dreams of Grandmas house
Dreams of The Pond
of Nahla the golden dog
of Mohka the black dog
of Pablo the horse
of Abraham the donkey
and ********* if I can't remember the cats name.
I do remember how I would only see it around meal time and then only briefly; descending from the attic to eat Fancy Feast.
Cutting cold hot dogs to mix in with the dog food, taking a bite or two from each dog, hot dog that is.
Stacking
Stacking
and stacking more hay.
Then, slowly, one bail, split in two, half for the ******* mixed with Alfalfa the other half for the horse.
I was, maybe (I'm a little too drunk to remember), 7 or 8, when my sister and I captured a box full of tree frogs from The Pond. Excited with our new box of living toys, we brought them back to the red house/trailer Frankenstein. Sitting outside in the sun we attempted to count them, fruitless, but convince a couple of dirt stained, sun baked, white trash kids of that.
Yelling (always yelling, never brash, rarely angry, always loving yet, always yelling) our Grandma called us in for lunch, stouffers lasagna with Truckee Sourdough Company bread greased thickly with tube garlic butter.
We ate, drank our whole milk, did our best to avoid the tantalus sin of sunscreen, and scrambled back outside, no thought or worry for our frogs.
It must have been July or August. the famed drought of the Western United States, aided by childish disregard, had slaughtered our maybe two dozen tree frogs.
I'll tell ya, I don't remember when or how Grandma (a lover of all things living, besides Bush 1 or Bush 2 perhaps) found the frogs but I do remember her often and automatic exclaim of "Son of a gun!" was replaced with the real version, replaced and amplified and aimed.
I can't remember our punishment or if we received one, but, rest assured, Joslyn and I never jammed a plastic handheld aquarium full of tree frogs ever again.
Thank Grandma Vicki for that one.
Thanks Joslyn, for reminding me of the attic cats name: Poe
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 9:55 PM UTC
i’m not
singing
If I Had a Hammer
until all
beings
are freed
from
suffering.
didn’t
shoot
myself
in
the
foot
today,
surprised?
not
saying I'm deep,
but this wind
is a challenge
to a fly
line.
Dec 2, 2018
Dec 2, 2018 at 8:04 PM UTC
~for M.C.C. ~
who sang me to sleep,
when my soul begged me for
sweet release,
just was lucky, I guess
*"Mornings here with a coffee cup
Stories in my head, looking up
If the rain holds off we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway"*
<>
Been there, done that,
ritualized & compartmentalized
the essences of the routinized,
to measure the days of my life,
as small keepsakes,
charms and tokens on a bracelet,
jingle bo jangle,
when another be repeated,
the telling belling of
a ✅ of satisfying satisfaction,
<>
and I!ve been bone
marrowed & narrowed hell~married,
imprisoned until decisioned,
that no life was no life at all,
(take note! y'all y'all),
and I miss my dog's greetings,
and snoring while I'm wide awake,
always loved to drive too fast on
back country narrow lanes,
in my suburban shrunk
small suv,
with radio blaring, no need for
trucking on the Truckee,
been there, done that..
<>
in the small ways,
in the
small places,
take my slow going days my way,
and not no need
to rent borrowed uninfluenc-ed content
cause I custom built it in,
easy like, five easy pieces,
learned to make daisy peaces,
of the bright nights melding
with life affirming hot sunlight
and there is no bad time,
with a cold blue~ribbon
in my left,
my right grasping two O'clock
on my heart and steering wheel,
driving freedom fine,
Chapin~ Carpenter
on the stereo dial,
no set time,
just anytime,
rain or shine
for me and my poems
to *** together,
like old time,
any fine rhyming time,
together we flashback
to the sweet Release
from jail in 2008
<>
***and break out a new one and clap it onto the clasp
my bracelet of charmed
keepsakes,
like memories of
my old dog, thinking
one more time,
just got lucky***
6/27/25
Jun 27, 2025
Jun 27, 2025 at 3:32 PM UTC
Missing the drive to Truckee,
Graegeagle/ Almanor fantasies
Missing the front deck
Bears & squirrels
Jim and Marylee
So happy
Missing Jim & Marylee
Packing up the old VW
Take you anywhere
Missing Eric & Anne
Missing Eric & ?
Katie Doug and Cheyene
James & Amanda
Sarah & Hannah
Emily too
Frank and Susan
What are we going to do?
No fish to be caught
They rarely were,
No smokes in the morning with the lake out there
Missing the view of the lake
Being out on the water
The music always playing
Missing the dogs in the water
The colors of the afternoon
Changing into the night clothes
While the camp fire begins to go
And later, 1950's radio shows
After several days the mind begins to change
Panoramas and vistas
Restore perspective
Missing Cheese Camp
Yearly healing
The lost year when there is
just a covid snow and no where to go
goes and goes...
Jul 15, 2020
Jul 15, 2020 at 1:03 AM UTC
forgot how to love
she said 'spank me, man'
i spanked her too hard
I tried to kiss her kneck like James Dean
she didn't feel it.
i made her bed while she was showering,
i made her coffee while she dressed,
i held her hand at the bustop and then walked home.
i found a note in my pocket
a drawing of a flower,
a drawing of lips kissing,
her handwriting
again I'm in high school learning how to love
this time my lover already knows
and so it is easy to remember.
her makeup stained my favorite shirt,
the one my dad bought at a brewery in Berkeley but to be fair, the blue one that says 'Truckee' was my favorite until this morning
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 10:07 PM UTC
Across from the plaza
where the homeless
and street people usually gather
on concrete steps
by the Truckee River
stands an old stone church
stained glass angels
stare down from the belfry
roof whitewashed in pigeon ****
Today their unblinking eyes gaze
not on the poor and desperate
but on smiling families
a tilt a whirl
a bounce house
a mini carnival for children
happy squeals fill the air
vendors set up white tents
along the swollen river
a band begins playing
as a crowd gathers
I sit on a metal bench to rest
notice a bar welded
across the middle
recently added
dividing it in two
a clear message
for sleepy eyes
Further downriver
away from the festival
the eight dollar microbrews
the bassy hip hop sounds
the mingled food smells
two panhandlers sit inside the "B"
of the giant "BELIEVE" sculpture
across from the Virginia Street bridge
eating plastic wrapped sandwiches
passing a bottle in a brown paper bag
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 12:20 AM UTC