Hobos

Hobos are hep. Not hip, for everyone is well aware that the word hip lost any oomph long ago. It has gone the way of right on and the dreaded neat-o into the cultural vacuum cleaner. Maybe it will be recycled five years from now. Maybe never. But hep is right fucking now.

Even though hobos are hep, I do not know a thing about hobos.

The vacuum, you see, is with me. And Wonder Bread is not the culprit; my mother would not buy me a single square, fearing the chemicalization would push my already pale skin toward, for lack of a better song title, a whiter shade of pale. My friends, I reasoned, could begin to fear their former friend, now florescent, the one with the skin disease that Michael Jackson has. You know: vitiligo.

I have never met a hobo with or without a viscious skin disease but the fact that I was - in part - raised in suburbia makes me believe that if vitiligo is really out there, and not just something my mom made up to scare me into eating whole grain food, then hobos have it. Not whole grain bread mind you but vitiligo. They must. With no family pet save a rusty can of beans, no car waiting on their sixteenth birthday, no remote control set up inside a boxcar, how can a hobo possibly survive?

I say in part above to emphasize that a small portion of me just might be hep. You know how I know this? I have eaten dirt. Hobos no doubt have eaten dirt. Thus, the bond between me and hobos has been cemented by the soil of the earth.

Hobos eat dirt; eating dirt equals street cred; street cred is most definitely hep. By way of soil eating, I, too, have gained hep points. Here is my lament: because I contain both ‘burb knowledge and hep cred in my cranium, I can conceivably get into the hottest clubs and pay five dollars for water bottled in Idaho. Hobos cannot do that – they have the hep but not the knowledge of who to bribe. Neither of us has been on television, and neither of us is likely to, unless a body is found floating in a creek somewhere. The fact remains: hobos have no chance. None at all. This is perhaps the single biggest reason why hobos are hep.

I guess what I am saying is that I want to be a hobo.

The Poet At Dusk

Good words can be seen

in the shade of a blade of

grass, content to rest

Heard at Buena Vista Park, 1996

What's needed is truth,

not deception - it's all a

conspiracy, man!

Convergence

Rostral thoughts reflect

what we aspire to to be

and what we hope for

Must

How do sprouts know when to lift their heads and shout?

Like cool marble on the belly of a bare foot
baring the tenacity of cancer
betraying the lunacy of a blood moon
pulling syllable fossils and making them whole,
this is part the art of writing.

The other part? Reflection:
a reader a writer and the words between
creating a stream of consciousness
or a face peering into clear water only to see itself
for some there is nothing else
for me there is nothing else.

untitled one

she assigns blame and
can not figure out
why she is alone

why no one sews soothing words
into a comfort

why her life spins like
the last revolutions of a top

why stars glint skyward
(because they just be)
unknowing their terresterial names,
assigned by people who
point at the sky

and this she can not get

A Late Grace

Midnight brings a grace that won't sleep,
leaving you pacing,
walking through minefields of hope
with elephant steps
that imprint the ground
while you pace evermore.

It is recursive:
the walking leads
to more walking which leads
to kicking when you sleep,
staring when awake,
connecting with
the yelping of hounds and
the gnawing on bones,
connecting by
choking when you fuck,
feeling the field-dive of hawks
and mourners and
doves in flight
as you walk
and walk
and walk some more

Hold This In Your Mind and Heart

Ripeness of mind has

more value than place or space

or anything else.

Hour of Slack

Myth is alive:
in every cowboy hat
and neck tied,
with every collection plate
and each person not
tied to the dominant paradigm
lie residue of what progress
has passed.

The sky walkers, the boss talkers,
have always trumped the wind walkers
and why not: they deal the cards that
set the rules for the game.
These myths funnel upward . . . or do they?

Not enough people look for the holes
but many find them: turning slack hours into
private paradigm, one that wears a
sideways hat as disguise, one that
wears a Santa suit to dispense condoms,
one that smiles and nods while
understanding that cause and effect has less to
do with bowing to the man and everything to do
with wanting what you get.

Dirty Squirrel

Do what you're not to do and pay
sayeth the hanging judge,
but two squirrels think
nothing of suffering as they
rev like racers at the foot of
the tree, mooning me,
with their bushy tailed ani
twitching at what they see.

My synapses fire at a mere java lick.
To the rodent, heaven is a nut
fallen, and paws don't wait,
grabbing glee with all a small
body can muster.

While I sip at my thick brew
awaiting the grace of a later day,
the squirrel's already got hers . . .

Eve Lonesome

Beautiful was all he said:
the thought wandered as
cicadas chirped and prairie grass rustled,
commenting biddies at dusk.
Legs crying, the rider pushed
on into oxygen-starved darkness as if on rails,
oblivious to where it might go,
unseeing of its end,
thinking yet not getting it,
and cool air turned cold
out where the steam shovels,
knowing this day was done,
unignited their fires and slept.
Can a steam shovel know what
a rider cannot?