Dirty old Truck Driver

Video poker at the bar
a soothing respite
from Sophomore essays
far from the maddening voices we're
struggling to find
Game's on and--
I miss my dyslexic friend

What do heavy equipment operators
and English teachers
have in common?
football--mostly

how arrogant to assume
after 28 years of  Jr. High technology
and remedial reading
I could step into high school English

How much D would appreciate
the ambiguity of Hamlet
or the religious satire
of "The Lottery?"


The stool next to me speaks

"So, where you headed"

"I live here."

"Really? What do you do?"

"I teach."

"No..."

"Yea.. High School English."

"No Shit! I thought you was one of us dirty old truck drivers!"

"Well... (what am I supposed to say)

...thanks!" (it's nice to fit somewhere)

Like Frankenstein

somewhere smothered

under the glaring white 

lies my summer

you know

the three reasons 

I teach

june

july 

and 

august

and it's just

january

so.....

i've come to believe

just as much as Persiphone's return from Hades,

or Promethus's Fire,

it's my dreams

that melt the snow

we read Frankenstein in February

while I'm on Cabelas

filling a cart with fishing tackle 

hammered nickle, brass,

or chartreuse cowbells?

brown or brookie rapalas?

hell just buy them all...,

a little lighter action fly rod would be nice too
For those days I'm up to my hips in cold river

'aother pair of waders and

Dr. Frankenstein's search for the Elixr of Life?

... duh.... 

alienation rejection by our creator and society

really...

we don't need no stinking creator, 

we don't need no stinking society 

we don't need no EDUCATION

Huckleberry, give that monster a fishing pole

problem solved

responsibility you say? .... to society..  to friends ... to family

oh my god....

                       I could really use a new boat... 

or at least a new motor

hmmmmmm......

nature... oh sweet mother of mine

freedom..... 

I'll be responsible to her... and only her

I hear Alice Cooper 

sing'n 

school's out for summer...

... somewhere... out there...summer

on that ice

with that monster... and I'm chasing it

like Frankenstein

gray flannel

gray flannel

muffles the sun

softens the earth

words drip gently

gracefully
heart to soul

feeding poets

This Precious Moment

I smell fresh light wafting 

near this dissolving darkness

I hear its faint ringing,
the second hand ticking
while the refrigerator hums

and the distant driver drones

I tensely anticipate 

the first tweet to ripple the silence,
a tentative answer,
an assertive reply,
a confident rejoinder,
the ensuing cacophony of chirps,

and
the distant driver cross fading 

into the morning commute.

So,
right now,
in the warmth
of this darkness,

before
the tiniest
glimmer
glints,

before
the bubble of dawn 
creeps in
and blasts it away,

before
it's burned
in the cold cruel reality of
all consuming light,

I'm holding onto this

precious moment





  

I keep

Deep down there
where dreams are buried under
the realities of everyday life

I keep going.

Under the bottom
of a dry well
infested with dark craving creatures
smothered over with rusty scraps
of traumatic memories

I keep hoping

Here, there, everywhere
Hugging the earth
I am surrounded
by the spirit
to whom

I keep praying

Water and Blood

Grandpa and dad built our house over the course of a spring and summer when I was four years old. They dug a deep foundation but the ground in Rangely, Colorado was unstable, and as years passed our house sank. My father kept jacking it up hoping that  it would eventually settle and eventually it did. Same thing happened to the garage they built the next spring, but it wasn't perched on a stem wall above the ground, sat flat on a slab and couldn't be elevated.  The garage wound up  lower than the street and flooded when it rained or the snow melted.  A garage flood  was fortunate because it would freeze to become an indoor skating rink.

My father found it amusing.  "You know what that little shit did?" he slurred as he swayed on his drunken feet balancing a whiskey in one hand while pointing at me with the other. "He charged all his friends to skate in his garage. Whole goddamn neighborhood line up and paid him a dime each to skate indoors."  

"Smart little bastard," Hap said grinning wryly.  They laughed as I propped three fingers on the smooth green felt and circled the stick with my thumb and forefinger. The cue ball clicked the purple four  into the corner pocket just as the Rangely BPOE Lodge door buzzed in Jr Hume. "Jr. you son of a bitch! Ask Young what his kid did with that sunken garage of his." Hap accosted him as Junior slid his key card back into his wallet.  Jr. was amused, and I listened to the story repeated to everyone on a bar stool as I played 8 ball with myself in the adjoining pool room.

The story was only half-true. I never charged anyone anything. I skated in my garage by myself  most of the time but once in a while a couple of friends joined me. It was only a single garage so there wasn't  enough room to do too much, but it was fun skating back and forth from one wall to the other and slam into the garage door like a hockey player.    We would line up, race to the door, slam into it and fall down like a handful of jacks.   It was an odd kind of game kids enjoy.

Another one of my odd pleasures was building dams wherever I found  running water.  I built a damn once in the ditch by Rangely Elementary School that backed up for three days.  When I finally broke the pile of rocks and boards that held it, the water roared into a flash flood over the ditch bank and covered our play ground about 4 inches deep. The power of  that water was thrilling and dam building became an addiction.  

One day in early spring t the water coursed down our street from the snow melt and threatened our garage. To save the garage from sinking further, my father,  raised a farmer and no stranger to a shovel, dug a ditch to channel the water away.  He was pleased with his work as all the water running down from the street was swept past the garage into the alley where it would harm no buildings. 

I was pleased too. As a dam builder it was a dream to have this stream of water running through my own yard. I drug out all of our scrap wood and secured it in place with some big rocks and scrap cinder blocks. I made the water back up all the way into our driveway until it was a lake and finally flanked the higher ground, went around the ditch my father dug and flooded our garage. I had had my fun and was getting ready to break the damn when mud sloshed behind my back.

His big meat hook of a hand  jerked my shoulder around to his furious face. "You little son of a bitch," he said gritting his teeth, "I spent my whole lunch hour digging that ditch! Don't you ever pull a stupid stunt like this again you little bastard!" He pushed me and started to turn away before his anger flooded it's banks and the meat hook whirled around and clubbed my face. "Asshole!" I heard through the ringing black stars. 

Freezing mud engulfed me. I laid in it stunned as he sloshed angrily into the house and slammed the door.  He'd verbally abused me before, thrown things at me and even kicked my ass hard enough to knock me down. At 6'2" 240 lbs, he was dangerous when angered, but I still loved my father.  Not this day, though, I hated him.  I drug myself up from the mud, wiped the dripping blood  from my nose and vowed to myself I'd never be like him.  

The Cornmeal Path

cornmeal sand

cushions 

my 

soul

as it treads

upon the path 

the cornmeal path