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« On The Road »

One realizes when they go out west.
That so many have never seen a real southern belle twink before.
A prophet is never recognized is his own home, at best,
And so i like to see things I’ve never seen before.

The south is so provincial in ways we often forget.
Here, it’s a phone booth every couple blocks, most neighborhoods have a community garden,
Sundry others which beget,
Freedom, but somehow, with such amenities, hearts harden.

We don’t quite know why, but despite
Spinning signs and sky trams and queers and vegans
And $18 cocktails they put on fire and police that are lenient,
Most find the ground more enlivening than the city’s light.

Still, there’s something about riding the light-rail 50 minutes to the “beach.”
Wait, sorry, that was in Wilmington, in the 1920s— Lumina.
Sauvie Island isn’t something they’ll have you reach
Lest you’re a corpse floating down the Columbia.

So y’all can keep y’all’s sidewalks and y’all’s prosperity and pride.
I’ll take the Corpus Christi procession on Fordham Boulevard.
I’ll take the haziness, the laziness, the gloom of gazes that wish to deride
Me. In exchange I’ll get something vague about a bahia’d summer yard.

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And it often makes me sad
That folks would rather stay inside.
I like TV, but also being bad
And seeking the encounter with that from which they hide.

Solemnly slovenly, i met a bumblebee on the porch,
Seeking respite while the devil beat on his wife.
I told her about going to church,
And she told me about her life,

Which was really quite contained,
But she knew of those who lived in a place
Where you could hear the flowers gossip.
Where, in a certain stillness, you could see the meeting of the four winds,
Could go from whence the sky and sea blossom,
Or spend a long time finding a hermit or a tree
To convince
To share the knowledge that be
In the heart of that not often sought,
Neither within a mirror, nor something bought.

And that damn bastard old fucking crow jeered and hollered
As i maniacally drew up my plans.
He knew others couldn’t be bothered
By the wild waving and gesturing of my hands.

My bee friend bade me the end fared-well
As I lumbered back onto the screen.
Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t tell
Why that damn old rotten crow had to be so mean.

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And there will come a day,
When youth will pass away.
What will they say
About me?