Tumbleweed,
tumbleweed,
drying in the sun,
which hidden pasture
did you blow in from?

Bands tan and brown,
Crystals sticky white,
I envision your owner
dropping you in the night
under glow of police light.

Under watchful camera eye,
along the rocky terrain,
I see you tumbling down,
torrents of soft green rain,
fruit of the desert plain.

Tumbleweed,
tumbleweed,
snatched from the ground,
hiding in plain sight
waiting to be found.

A parting gift for the road
stretching endlessly ahead
battling sorrow and confusion,
worn down like tire treads,
a reprieve from a life that
sometimes feels like death.

How's the strawberry shake?
Response - It doesn't taste good.
The other stall offers better.
Seller staring.
Tumbleweed.

That girl!
Her voice is terrible.
Girl overheard. Their eyes met.
Tumbleweed.

Will you marry me?
*Tumbleweed.

tumble weeds are rolling wild and yet so free
when i was just a kid thats the way i used to be
taking life for granted life without a care
just like the tumbleweed roaming everywhere

never settled down drifted every place
doing what i like making my own space
travelling everywhere all across the land
just like the tumbleweed rolling in sand

natures little wild child with no right or wrong
taking life granted what ever came along
life was just a game that i used to play
i would play along then just roll away

i was just a wild child not knowing right from wrong
just like the tumbleweed i would roll along
drifting everywhere all along the land
like the tumbleweed drifting in the sand

She grew soft flowers,
back when her hands were small,
with narrow stems and crisp scalloped petals.
She grew them without dirt
or water, holding them so
carefully
it was as if she was feeding them
air. She found in them
beauty, she found
in them hope, as much as
all the quiet things she most wanted to be. But
no one told her and she learned
quickly
what no one would say. As the years went
by the stems grew meek
and the once bright
petals began to steadily fade.
She knew no better, no other, way.
It came like a blow to her gut when she
was finally forced to say
her flowers were paper.
Not meant to last. Not meant to stay.
Not meant to be anything but a
momentary breeze. They did not tell her
beauty is destined to pass. They
wouldn't say not everyone is wise
enough to take
the hope they're given and
run.
She decided then
what she would not be. Not flowers
of tissue with pipe cleaner leaves but something
far distant from these false
house plants. She would seize hope
and with it she'd run, until
she grew branches and roots meant to be torn loose.
Be they paper or petals, she could
no longer grow flowers, but at least,
what she discovered in her now
tumbleweed garden is that at least you can
see a tumbleweed take
to the breeze before its last
breath of shame and regret. After all
sometimes hope for a future beyond, is all you get.

Fumble little toe further may you grow; the tumbleweed is a playground for practice
Wayward to a vast world may it hold you to the earth
Where there is fortune; poverty; glory; starvation and duty.

Stumble little toe the more you ever know, the tumbleweed is part of the experience
Oh, so little you’ve seen, and thy feet can cover only cover so much
Don’t you worry, the theatre; storytellers; night-time stories will explain it.

The pace of your epic crumbles,
It is so life will forward you like an arrow.

Death is nothing to fear,
It welcomes, nonetheless.

Your fruit is to create as the universe did for you.

Yes, little toe this is where the song ends sharp, the tumbleweed could never wish to harm you
Abruptly we say our goodbyes because you are ready for a while
Good night.

nothing has changed
in years
at least not when i look
out the window and see
the same sunsets
i've been seeing every
night when i don't want
to be inside.

there are people
who were born looking
like poetry
pink toenails
swaying to some
soft song.

there are people
who were born looking
like music
hair flowing
feet dancing to some
wild jig.

there are people
who were born looking
like a painting
their skin
harmonizing to every
untamed color.

and then there are people
who were born looking
like trees
standing straight and tall
unbending
in the wind.

looking like trees
and feeling like
tumbleweeds
born to love and
leave before the
desert storm.

blowing their way
through life.

people looking like trees
and feeling like
tumbleweeds
tumbleweeds like me.

my cracked
toenails growing down
into the floor and twisting
for something to hold onto
my hair growing upwards
through the roof and
towards the late
afternoon sun
and my skin slowly separating
into layers of bark.

every
fiber
screaming
run.

a tumbleweed
born and formed
into a tree
no longer a sapling
too late to leave
too early to die.

go home all of you
and i'll be happy
alone in the dark
the only place where a
tree can truly be
a tumbleweed.

my eyes opened to find
the thin lizard dawn gleaming
after the gutter drank its' fill
of the moon last night
the tambourine
buried in my lungs still
vibrating like these walls
papered with cheap roses

last night i found comfort the
only way i know how
in situations like this
beside a girl wearing
a pretty ribbon
twisted around her waist
pomegranate lipstick
wet clay & tragic glitter
smeared across her eyelids

we spent the night
roped together by
half-removed clothing
& my fingers third
knuckle deep
counting the pulse
of the heart
of the universe

while the wild fox
barked on the hill outside
& the mockingbirds
played riffs in the lilac bushes
her ******* ran tight
around her shins &
she sputtered the dark
lyricism of bees
twisting her tongue
backwards around
itself in my ear

our bare bellies
slapped together as
my tongue found her
tooth enamel &
the trees formed
a tight center loop to
harness the sky
for us & i
held my breath
waiting for her
to breathe first

i can feel her chest
& plump **** now
quietly throbbing
against the tight young
flesh of my back but when
i roll over & see her
eyes darting
green like a thin
ocean laser avoiding
my dynamic gaze &
her pouty mouth emitting
a pink yawn i can tell
she's unhappy & ashamed
of me

i tried to run
my fingers through
the butterscotch tumbleweed
of her hair but she just
popped her gum
& sent me
high stepping through
the soft warm mud
& chest high cattails
of her driveway
callow under the clouds
stuck like gnats to
the fly paper sky

The result is inevitable
The brittle bundle that it becomes

A strum of the banjo
A lone note
Fragile and feeble as it hums

And so the tumbleweed rolls
Its prickly claws hungry for redemption
From the ineluctable fate
The cursed dole

Among the dust-filled air and crimson sky
The lack of time is hard to deny
So with the eerie creaking of the abandoned gate

Out the tumbleweed goes
The echo of the deafening silence follows

When I was a child, there was something mildly special about standing in the garden, late into the minutes leading up to my bed time. It was something about the thrill of disobedience, as if I were already an adult, making my own decisions.

This poem is about my testicles.

A thousand twinkling freckles gazed down at me. Joining the dots with a finger extended high as if gripping an imaginary pen, lines would appear. The celestial wrinkles of an old woman who wears these wrinkles with pride – the imprint left by a lifetime of smiles like how an old arm chair wears the imprint left by a lifetime of back-sides.

A singular eye governs the sky, and through what I interpret as a flirty act of desire, winks at me, through a thirty day cycle. I let out a giggle, and wink back.

On the horizon, trees sway in a purposeful and rhythmic way, as if conducting a symphony meant just for me; the delicate harmony of distant car horn beeps, the melody of crickets and bird tweets, and the gentle percussion of snapped twigs and crushed leaves.

Blades of wet grass become fingers seductively passing between my toes. A gust of wind blows and like a comb, massages out the knots in my hair, whispering through a foreign tongue pros into my ear.

And I can feel it inside, a connection with the night. As passion builds, a bird takes flight, and I let out a confident breath: I am in love with life! I’m in love with the Earth, warm days and clear skies. I’m in love with nature: the birds and mammals, snails, slugs, spiders and flies.

I await a reply.

Which doesn’t come.

Years go by.

And then, half way through my puberty, when the world was not so alien and new to me, I had the sad epiphany that maybe this symphony of car horns and bird tweets was not meant for me.

That, if I were not standing precisely here, or had tragically lost both my ears, the trees would continue to conduct their tune, unstirred by the news that their audience had disappeared.

And with this realisation, came an audible, synchronised plop, as – like a penny – my two ***** simultaneously dropped as if recoiling, paralysed in shock.

Then in the following silence, a tumbleweed drifted by as if to imply some kind of mockery to the thoughts going through my mind.

But of course, it was just a coincidence. The tumbleweed, in its oblivious innocence has no knowledge of the context of my thoughts, like a bolt of lightning can’t appreciate its momentary grasp of dominance over an angry sky. Like an atom doesn’t appreciate the burden of the service it provides, like a poem doesn’t appreciate the metaphors woven purposefully between every line.

And how could I sleep at night knowing that a hurricane could slip into existence, tear its way through a village of innocents then ******* in an instant leaving no form of apology or reason?

This is the dilemma of owning a conscious mind in a world of impartiality.

And if you don’t mind, I’m going to divide this audience into two sides: those who are matured and wise, and when they look at the night sky, see those wrinkles reflected in their own eyes – and those who are young and naïve, to whom this insight may come as a surprise.

To the wise and mature, I assure you that we are all in fact slowly dying. The only reason you’re alive is through generations of successful breeding and surviving. God is dead, and love is a chemical compound produced in your head.

And to the young and naïve, I’ll leave you with this line: despite the pessimistic undertones this poem implies, if you just don’t worry, you’ll turn out just fine.

I was detached
so I could wander
hand in hand with the wind.
Who am I now?
I feel so frail
and my flowers are long gone.
“Look what I've become”
I say to no one
as the buzzards cry.
Their shadows circle me
like dark moons in a galaxy
starving for life —
am I not alive?

I've never seen flesh
that was still carrying a soul,
but the wind tells me stories
of slinking through their hair
when the world was young —
I can smell their skin on its breath,
its breath that’s carried me
to the edge of the earth a thousand times
to find only stars
that those ancient, mysterious people worshiped
before I was even a seed.

Am I qualified to pray
to those stars that have lead us
to a thousand sunrises?
Will they even hear me
with this voice that is only a rustle
across rocks and dirt,
this voice that is literally nothing but a ...

my soul who shapes the clouds
who possess my dry body, and countless others all at once
interrupts me
and whispers yes.

I smell the gods in its voice now.

I am your Mother, the root of your existence Tumbleweed.  Will the stranger use you as kindling until you're completely consumed? I beg my father for mercy to be poured upon you.

Wander, ebb and flow,
Discern where in this desert the wind should blow
There's a battlecry for convention
An even fiercer for freedom
It is the slight rustle when a tumbleweed passes

-cj

Katherine writes songs about wheat fields and her father’s blisters
From the four-by-six closet beneath the staircase.
Aaron doesn’t write anymore.

Katherine draws music notes to record
The tune of footsteps and creaking oak,
While Aaron feels the rough grain of maple window frames
And avoids his reflection in the double-paned glass.

Katherine holds tight to her pen
Like a man who’s lived a good life holds on to his final breath.
Aaron, he never found it that hard to exhale.

Katherine knows love like she knows the Sun,
While Aaron, who once flew wax-winged,
Stopped studying mythology
And found trust in extinguished light bulbs.

Katherine draws stick figures in the collected dust
Of cracked-cloth book covers
And embraces every particle that kisses her fingerprint.
Aaron wears black leather gloves
Like a desensitizing second-skin.
But they both close their eyes
When the wind brushes their cheeks.

When Katherine cries it’s wet and sloppy
And when it’s over she usually giggles
At the feeling of being human.
Aaron’s eyes are desert moons;
If he believed in a god he’d pray for rainstorms,
But instead he picks tumble weeds from his teeth
With the ribcage he found when the vultures were through.

Katherine webs outlines with plot twists and foreshadows
While Aaron knows some stories
Are made up as they’re written.

Katherine collects crushed asphalt from both sides of divided highways
And mixes it with ****** wax to varnish her innocence.
Aaron drives the back-roads and keeps one eye on the rearview mirror.
He finds solace in sharp turns.

Tonight, Katherine curls her toes as she writes a song about
loving up until your very last breath
And caresses her lips.
Aaron chews on his and slides open the window.
They both recall the taste of someone else’s skin from the salt in the air.
Katherine’s candle flickers and pops when she moves
Her hand through the light to cast stories on the wall.
Aaron crawls down the shadowed side of hallways
And feels the grey grow in his hair as he starts up the staircase.

Step by step by step by
each breath is
step by step
loved a little bit less
An all but silent cacophony of creaking oak.

Katherine etches a treble clef but her pupils dilate
When she senses the unfamiliar feeling of a second heartbeat.
With stitched silk stockings
she tip-toes up the same song.
Aaron hears music for the first time in so long
And turns to see where goose bumps come from.

Katherine crescendos at the top of the stairs and
Stares into two full, bright desert moons.
Aaron finds it hard to let go of the breath it takes to say,
“Don’t be afraid.”
Katherine tumbles like fingers down piano keys,
But for a split-second in the moment their eyes met
They both forgot the weight of loneliness.

tumbleweeds are rolling  all along the plain
rolling once rolling twice then rolling once again
drifting on the wind blowing in the breeze
rolling on for ever these little desert trees
they just never stop roll on wild and free
i suppose for the tumbleweed this is meant to be

Across dry plains the tumbleweed dances
          off the dusty floor
As a renounced ballerina reminisces
          in her old studio
          On the corner of the street
                    towards the west
                              following the sun
                                        where all dreams go
And where the wind carries the tumbleweed.

The air rustles in the drift
          as she sighs
Breathing in the dusty smell
          of the grass
          Of the room
                    where she once performed
                              for her beloved
                                        now carried away
                                                  by the same wind
                                                  that carries tumbleweeds
                                                  and­ caused dust to dance.

A tear soaks the wooden floor
          a small relief from the barren span
                    for the lonely ballerina
                              who is forever carried
                              along the scalding land.
Lost.
          Like words unsaid
                    on lips untouched
                              cracked by the sun
                                        where all dreams go
And where the wind carries the tumbleweed.

You broke the umbilical cord attached to this earth . With the south by southwest winds you rode a baleful streak . Like Poncho your life was left untold . Like a desert prayer that's just a whisper in the cold evening air .
Where they laid your body to rest , no one said . Now it's too late .
The virga falls never to quench the thirsty sands . The sorrow is planted as corn in rows of fertile futility . And dust is harvested , dust and tumbleweeds .
Reasons are the excuses we need to answer all the questions why . There is no reason in the south by southwest wind . And the tumbleweeds bend to the sympathy of an incessant desire .

From the ripple in a glass of water
to the sonic boom of this internal
Pompeii, the erosion
of her etymology is the only
sense of movement in her
dilated, cave-pupil eyes, those
two ghost towns spanning
and encircling all the way back,
stretched like an elastic blindfold
past the moment the first brick was laid,
perhaps her first vivid memory,
or anecdote, or first word uttered
in a Cuban slum.

There are mountains of tumbleweed
over the once thriving metropolis
that expanded towards America;
who threw herself into
the architecture of seven pillars,
borne from her land and
minerals. Gone are the
huts that housed her
knowledge of basic motor skills.

The women who once imagined
Mami and Mima as her birth
name now scrub off
the graffiti of her excrement;
they saw a swarm of pink moons
the day she told the same story
to every visitor that came
their way, each day then becoming
a missing surveillance tape, a sinkhole
dismantling the awareness
in her bones and stubborn will,
until she became
these dust-engulfed plains with
a daughter and granddaughter
archeological in their efforts
to chase down the remains
of a girl still breathing in
those eyes from time to time.

Every other ten-millionth blink of
the eye rides the silhouette of a post-infant girl
on the high tides of her quick visit,
looking in horror
as the nation of her life's nightmares,
heartaches, broken promises, romances,
spiritual breakthroughs, life-changing seconds
drowns with morbid unity en cien fuegos,
desperately attempting to assemble
the remnants of her psyche
past her cognitive bloodclots
with the awareness of one
who speaks no languages.

Gone is the moment
she first learned
to feed her several children
before the slip of sunset.

One of seven pillars remain intact,
the others long dismantled of their
stick and straw infrastructures.

One pillar remained,
housed her own colony
for nine months,
and now both descendants
travel the mind of their
greatest influence
with perplexed dedication,
caustic humor the decoy
for swarms of exhaustion
and asphyxiation
from the truthful atmosphere,
reveling in the seconds
of humanity lurking
in an abandoned etymology.

Could we cut ourselves off from our country?
Burn all the books and monochrome rules;
Sever the fragile vessels of history?

I want to walk fast without news in my ear
over hills and fields and so thrilled with fear;
I want to take a tab
of fantastic poison
and see the world lit up
in a kaleidoscope of flags.

Through woods, past trees,
I will kick leaves
and brave a universe of tumbleweeds.
And from beneath a
canopy of luxury
a paradise I see
past the sun, where all is free
and hatred wastes and bleeds.

But everything is not as it seems -

Back home I dream in cut-throat numbers
vile quantities disturb my slumbers.
My identity drifts in the TV;
Jeremy Kyle makes my last plea
as my ears fill with adultery.

And then there are debts
that flash up - my patience cracks
into a pool of anguish.

I must get away,
get away from this madness.

Stage Design/American Drama


Down front on America’s stage—
awash in a universe
of light arranged by
the ultimate technician.
Come closer.  Anticipate
spectacle.

First sun-splash
on these shores fashions
fool’s gold of surf that heaves against
foam-smoothed, lobster black,
slick rock beaches of northern Maine/
bubbles about black rubber boots of men in boats—
another day, another dime,
shivered away in ancient rime—
adrift in fog on the black
                                          glass
                                                   harbor
                                                               surface.

Grand Canyon sunrise
          EXPLODES
               copper and white/
                    orange and green/
                          blood red/
over many thousand pounds
of brash brown
        dirt—
in every direction/especially down.
       Soldierly shadows armed with swords
       of slivered sunlight hack through scrub
       like so much meat, to each day’s final
       battle at the canyon’s rim/
while a mile below the torment
called the Colorado
turns silver and gold,
black, blue, and
thundering
mud.

Louisiana bayous trickle chlorophyll caramel over twisted hickory sentinels, monumental elms and sycamores—even the alligators.  More mystery here than far-flung nebulae—and everything fighting back ***** green kudzu.

The Badlands of South Dakota, striped like the surface of a ***** peppermint planet—sizzling in the sun, bone cold in the shade—knobby tan canyons wrapped in ribbons of rust that dribble sounds one can neither recall nor reproduce.

Same phenomenon frames dawn over spongy folds of tall green cilia ocean called simply The Plains.
Kansas, Nebraska, horizons so far away thunderstorms creep along like dark, threatening slugs.
Distant night fireworks laden with punishing hail hide tornadoes and winged farmhouses in the horizontal gloom.  In the morning—those sounds again.  Critters?  Wind.  Ghosts, maybe.

Spectral mists of the Great Northwest cloak clear-cut sores on Nature’s sacred,
fragrant, deep green shores, falling steep to the creamy Pacific.
Light's a plaything here.  Big Sur
renders color to gem, sparkles
down the coast
to rusty Golden Gate and grimy LA,
where the sun goes down brown
and the rain shines
like gun metal.

Georgia soil—
homicidal redheaded cousin running loose, looking for trouble—
grows swampy hardwood groves/
leaves hung limp from humidity/
masking antebellum secrets/
offering sanctuary to voodoo practitioners and moonshiners alike.
Magic, danger, ******, and ghosts
of slaughtered slaves wander tight-packed old-growth forests.
Some say the soil is red from ancient conflict,
unanswered pleas for mercy drowned
in the drenching rains
of hurricanes
strayed north from the Gulf of Mexico.
Others claim tears of countless mothers will never leave
Civil War blood completely dry.

Northern New England foliage--
master maples drunk on fresh cider/
psychedelic finger-paint exhibitionists high on
the year’s last harvest,
intoxicated by Nature’s largess/
symphonies of scarlet, tangerine, lemon, even purple--
regal birds migrate over lakes so blue
you could chip your teeth on them,
and a diehard hemlock conducts its final green opus to a sea of primary colors.

Iowa is quiet and corn, obscuring whole towns and the lives held captive therein.  All the green on Earth is planted here; all the sun, all the sapphire sky feeding knee-high-by-July crops, bleaching spare white churches, white picket fences, white-on-white generations and all their vanilla dreams.

Linger beneath Montana’s cobalt crystal canopy to know why it’s called Big Sky.
Stark, Crazy Mountains chase stuttering clouds above treeless, tumbleweed towns,
bathed in the same blues as Wyoming, blown through a wild man’s horn.

A wink of sunlight
mirrored in unseen peaks
perhaps hundreds of miles away—
snow so white/Rocky Mountains so hard and gray—
behind a universe of wheat flatness beckoning the eye to infinity, slowly,
slowly, the Continental Divide rises
from the horizon like a monster parade balloon filling with gas on another continent.
The Flat Irons--majestic stone slabs lounging against Boulder's nearby foothills--
were cursed by ancient observers.
One peek at their precarious slopes compels you to return.
Been back three times and I’m still not sure I believe it.

Southwestern deserts’ blaze,
haze, and halo—spotlights hot,
focused on towering sandstone totems.
Deep gashes of flowering canyon, adrift in the flat and barren,
rage water, mud, and death during summer storms.
Scrub and sand, dust and desolation, land unfit for demons.
Get thee behind me, Arizona.

Endless, straight, lonely two-lanes
carve the lunar landscape of west Texas
into parcels of wasteland, miles marked by
bleached carcasses of ranch animals
and their predators, some hung
on fences as a warning
that people really do
live there.

Cities have their place,
                    their places,
                    their placement--
but my heart can’t pound to the beat of traffic
like it does to waterfall spray.

Turn your back to the fire in sufficient twilight and a mountain range sharpens into a line—
coyotes prowling, howling on the perimeter.
To spy on a wild animal lost in thought.
The sight--and sound--as swans alight or leave a hidden pond.
Northern lights and swamp gas,
everywhere the stench
of Earth.

This
is what matters—
all around us—
this alone.

Not politics,
not religion,
not countries.

Just this—
stage.

I watched a plastic grocery bag roll down the road like a tumbleweed.
I was on my way home so I thought I'd pick it up.
The wind was blowing it my way so I walked along behind.
It was cold but the sun was coming through high clouds.
It hit a bit of water puddled from melting ice.
It stopped and breathed and quivered and I wondered briefly if this puddle had ended the bag's joyous rolling tumble in the sun.
With the help of the wind, the bag turned over and soon over again and, compact and steeled now with a quickly freezing brown water on it's sides, rolled faster than ever over snowbanks and driveways and lawns and the road.
A few houses from mine, the bag tumbled far up onto a neighbor's lawn and came to rest upon the sticks coming out of a garden.
In front of the bag now if the wind kept up was a long hedge that looked very ready to catch it safely and hold it until the neighbors saw it and decided to pluck it up and send that plastic bag on it's journey to the dump.
I smiled a little, as I got to keep my gloves on while I walked up my driveway empty handed, as I love to be.

These nowhere towns,
Mountain tops snow-capped long through march,
All else,
Enshrouded in brown.

Though people live here,
And seems they aren't broken down.

The paint peels from the motel,
The mother tends to her daze,
The attendant ponders the insects of the sill,
Tumbleweed the only things, un-willing of being still.

Life is good here,
In these hazy,
Background,
Nowhere towns.

2am is when the wolves call for me and I die slowly.

2am is when I end up sacrificing myself to you, so I can finally be quiet.

2am is when I won't fall asleep because all I have is this window to keep me company.
2am I look and see a tumbleweed in the streets, wandering aimlessly.

"That's my heart now set it free."

2am a song comes on the radio. It isn't familiar,  but it somehow describes everything I'm feeling, even right down to its melody.

2am I don't know who I am but all I know is I need a friend.

At 2am I will play this song until my head can't take it anymore. It's a mantra that won't stop repeating itself, and I love it.

2am I look into my sheets. I peer down and see your face. I reach to touch it but it fades away. Transparent you is very rude.

At 2am I will sing this tune I do not know. Therefore it will sound drunken, but I do not care because it reminds me of you.

2am where did you go? You used to be right next to me. Now all I have is oxygen filling the space where you would look at me and say, "I love you."

2am how did I end up this way?  I open my hands and see my veins. I hate them. I hate them because you used to run your fingers across them.

2am I grab the weapon of death. I can see my reflection even in the darkness. As my heart throbs of pain, my life is over and I am free, at 2am.

Every time we're entwined
I know you wonder why I shut my
eyes
The truth is your love makes me feel
like I'm staring into the sun
It burns my nerves til I'm undone
and with no defenses left between
I shut them tight to avoid from being
seen

But you're the only boy I can't fool
and you must think me very cruel
when you ask me to look into your eyes
as you feel me from inside
but I simply cannot make love to you
when ******* is all I know how to do.

tumbleweed

I woke up in a Spaghetti Western
Not sure how this happened to me
Standing on the dusty streets of Laredo
With six desperado's down the street

I gazed off to my left
As a tumbleweed went tumbling by
There was a dog howling in the distance
With an odd sheen to the western sky

Can't say I wasn't trigger happy
With my hand inching towards my gun
Still wondering how it is I appeared here
In this B-movie western

Women and children were running for cover
They knew what was soon to go down
Truth is you can expect nothing less
When you live in a Spaghetti Western town

Pecos Bill was the first to draw
As I shot him between the eyes
Want you to know I took no pleasure in
Watching the other five men die

As I rode off into the sunset
The credits behind me scrolled
How I woke up inside of this movie
Is a mystery I will never know

I was three , no bigger than a west Texas tumbleweed . . . just three .

My mother hung the wash out on the line
and wiped the sweat off her brow with her hand .
Half an hour later the clothes were frozen .
Blue Norther . . . you can see them coming
a hundred miles away .
Wichita Falls , Texas . . . on the Wichita river .

Moses sat on a mountaintop gazing at the promised land but it was out of his hands now .
Leaning on his staff , the one that ate the Pharoh's two serpents . . . sssssssilently a single tear falls to the ground .

No fence could hold me . . . I was over or under in seconds .
A terror at three , a potential runaway .
The police knew me by first name  . . . just three .
The plains of North Texas , jackrabbits , coyotes , rattlesnakes and all . . . were home .

Forty years of desert wilderness ,
till the last man , woman , and child of Egyptian connection had died ,
. . . . . . was such a sacrifice made . . . . . .
Moses was the last to fall .
On a mountaintop of no consequences .

      "Run Rabbit Run"