Years ago, I was working the late shift at the biggest Juvenile Hall in the nation, five hundred and fifty kids locked up. I was driving home after the graveyard gig, after walking up and down the halls, checking on kids waiting to go to state prison or back out onto the streets, gangbanging all the way. I'm driving Hollywood Boulevard, just after six a.m., nothing much moving but an old grimy derelict and a couple of trucks. There, out of the corner of my eye, across the street, was a black hooker, an African-American woman, dressed in a white mini dress, looking cultured, sort of, except it was six a.m. and all the reasonable hookers had gone home already. She was pointing her finger at me. Sometimes I'd take the freeway home to the Canyons, sometimes I'd take the city streets, and that meant Hollywood Boulevard. I looked over, we made eye contact, I gave a nod, two souls of the night, working our worlds. Then I kept going, got away clean, as dawn quietly made its way into hard-edged, downtrodden Los Angeles.
Everybody knows about the story in the brain that makes the heart glow in the dark in the night so I say all right to the world from the most unknown unkempt derelict street teacher to the highest most lonesome mountain to every place in between, Tunnel Town, Regiment City, I sing lead in the Witness Bureau Blues Band because I'm missing my true voice I lost my love on a freeway named Gone and yet I carry on with you and you and my brothers and sisters sing the blues, true true come down from Shadow Mountain end up inside the heart of Squeaky Clean Alley, go forth into midnight parades with wash bucket drums, with spoons that hold your unique tune, with that woman, remember, her, the one that reminded you of an alabaster full moon, and whoa, go on to the cultured gent sitting in the third row center, who ever thought he'd be moving along with the music, he used to be Hobo Willie, before he got clean.
i used to run the derelict freeway with my dick falling out of my pants. i wasnt looking for a clean or cultured woman, just someone to fill the night urges of my libidinous sausage. on more than one occasion, i would wake in the morning, the room smelling of sweat and gin, an unknown woman next to me, her breasts bare in the dust and morning sunlight. With a piss hard-on i would stumble to the toilet and dizzily spray the seat with unchecked drainage. one morning i awoke next to a woman so drunk she had shit the bed and puked on pillow. Her name was Stacy, and i only knew that from the name tag stuck to her shirt,draped over the broken chair in the corner. I had to throw away all the bedding. I slept on a bare mattress for the next three weeks. That was before I met Elizabeth- the girl with angel hands. The one i thought could heal me.
A clean freeway, with a derelict walking along, oblivious to the many cars filled with cultured people who, in turn, never think of the homeless, the travelers, only of the night, bearing down on us all.
(I love the way those words line up together, like a poem unto themselves.)
The night sky was achingly dark - a perfect jewel box setting for the moon, a cultured pearl gazing down gently at the derelict freeway. The drive had been lonely, bumpy and teary. My body lunged out of the car at a rest stop, escaping the prison of that tin can. You can only travel for so long with your own thoughts.
I knelt in the grass and breathed the clean air in greedy lungfuls, gasping like a drowning man. My heart was desperate for a catharsis of some sort. You never get one when you want it, I guess that's what gives a catharsis its power when it does come along. The shock to the system.
Clean air, inky stillness, and that soft, kind moon. All draped oddly over the bitter reality of why I was here in the first place, heading to an unexpected funeral. Heartbeats shuddered in my chest, breath came ragged and loud, and I couldn't unclench my fists, tight knots on my thighs, without conscious thought to do so. Finally I lay back in that velvet grass and gazed back at the moon, and gave myself to her. She couldn't replace what I'd lost, but her gentle touch, once I settled down and let myself feel it, was a balm. I closed my eyes and was grateful for my quieted mind.
Then I got back up and back on that derelict freeway through the night.
The space was swept clear the night before, they said, of all derelict debris, including 7 teddy bears, 14 cans of organic backed beans, and an assortment of papers, some filled with sketches, some with written notes/communications…
the workers were paid by the hour…no one took time to look…what was noticed happened in passing and was mentioned over whisky shots at a locals’ bar just before closing…”whoever they were they were cultured types”…that was agreed…
”but what ever they were they aren’t now… too busy…freeway coming through…got deadlines…got to clear space for tomorrow.”
12 comments:
i wrote a song. here it is.
i got a bone to pick with you
and i hope to pick it clean
every night i dream of you
but you ain't nothin' like i dreamed
when i sleep, i see my classmates
preforming stand-up comedy
and i don't think their jokes are funny
and yet i wake myself laughing
oh, i wish i were a bit more cultured
oh, or maybe culture did this to me
i am just a derelict american dream
i admit i'm chasing structure
often more than righteousness
bend my knee before two altars
of idealism and brokenness
and it's empty on the freeway
as my buick rides to church
can't say why i travel this far
save that this hope is all i'm worth.
Just About Dawn in Los Angeles
Years ago, I was working the late shift at the biggest Juvenile Hall in the nation, five hundred and fifty kids locked up. I was driving home after the graveyard gig, after walking up and down the halls, checking on kids waiting to go to state prison or back out onto the streets, gangbanging all the way. I'm driving Hollywood Boulevard, just after six a.m., nothing much moving but an old grimy derelict and a couple of trucks. There, out of the corner of my eye, across the street, was a black hooker, an African-American woman, dressed in a white mini dress, looking cultured, sort of, except it was six a.m. and all the reasonable hookers had gone home already. She was pointing her finger at me. Sometimes I'd take the freeway home to the Canyons, sometimes I'd take the city streets, and that meant Hollywood Boulevard. I looked over, we made eye contact, I gave a nod, two souls of the night, working our worlds. Then I kept going, got away clean, as dawn quietly made its way into hard-edged, downtrodden Los Angeles.
IF YOU SHOOT A MAN IN RENO
I'm a cultured man
I take a night bound train
I drive the freeway
like I own the land
I come out of the tunnels clean
my father was a derelict
but I've forgotten that dream
and remember
if you shoot a man in Reno
"just to watch him die"
you don't go to Folsom Prison
in California
you do your time in Nevada
for the whole long ride
Everybody knows about the story in the brain that makes the heart glow in the dark in the night so I say all right to the world from the most unknown unkempt derelict street teacher to the highest most lonesome mountain to every place in between, Tunnel Town, Regiment City, I sing lead in the Witness Bureau Blues Band because I'm missing my true voice I lost my love on a freeway named Gone and yet I carry on with you and you and my brothers and sisters sing the blues, true true come down from Shadow Mountain end up inside the heart of Squeaky Clean Alley, go forth into midnight parades with wash bucket drums, with spoons that hold your unique tune, with that woman, remember, her, the one that reminded you of an alabaster full moon, and whoa, go on to the cultured gent sitting in the third row center, who ever thought he'd be moving along with the music, he used to be Hobo Willie, before he got clean.
DERELICT HEART
Drunk in Alabama
and drunk in Tennessee
after her last harangue
I couldn't find my way
no way to get free
Headed out on the highway
oh, call it a freeway now
let's go, going on to somewhere
anywhere this derelict heart
will go
I'm drunk in Alabama
I'm drunk in Tennessee
I'm clean cut and cultured sometimes
but mostly, that was long ago
night baby, night bird, night time
and true
It's night for this derelict heart
for this old clean cut cultured man
heading out on the freeway
with nowhere at all to go
Freeway flower sale,fatalistic farewell
i used to run the derelict freeway with my dick falling out of my pants. i wasnt looking for a clean or cultured woman, just someone to fill the night urges of my libidinous sausage. on more than one occasion, i would wake in the morning, the room smelling of sweat and gin, an unknown woman next to me, her breasts bare in the dust and morning sunlight. With a piss hard-on i would stumble to the toilet and dizzily spray the seat with unchecked drainage.
one morning i awoke next to a woman so drunk she had shit the bed and puked on pillow. Her name was Stacy, and i only knew that from the name tag stuck to her shirt,draped over the broken chair in the corner.
I had to throw away all the bedding.
I slept on a bare mattress for the next three weeks.
That was before I met Elizabeth- the girl with angel hands. The one i thought could heal me.
The World in a Flash
A clean freeway, with a derelict walking along, oblivious to the many cars filled with cultured people who, in turn, never think of the homeless, the travelers, only of the night, bearing down on us all.
(I love the way those words line up together, like a poem unto themselves.)
The night sky was achingly dark - a perfect jewel box setting for the moon, a cultured pearl gazing down gently at the derelict freeway. The drive had been lonely, bumpy and teary. My body lunged out of the car at a rest stop, escaping the prison of that tin can. You can only travel for so long with your own thoughts.
I knelt in the grass and breathed the clean air in greedy lungfuls, gasping like a drowning man. My heart was desperate for a catharsis of some sort. You never get one when you want it, I guess that's what gives a catharsis its power when it does come along. The shock to the system.
Clean air, inky stillness, and that soft, kind moon. All draped oddly over the bitter reality of why I was here in the first place, heading to an unexpected funeral. Heartbeats shuddered in my chest, breath came ragged and loud, and I couldn't unclench my fists, tight knots on my thighs, without conscious thought to do so. Finally I lay back in that velvet grass and gazed back at the moon, and gave myself to her. She couldn't replace what I'd lost, but her gentle touch, once I settled down and let myself feel it, was a balm. I closed my eyes and was grateful for my quieted mind.
Then I got back up and back on that derelict freeway through the night.
The space was swept clear the night before,
they said, of all derelict debris, including 7 teddy
bears, 14 cans of organic backed beans, and an
assortment of papers, some filled with sketches,
some with written notes/communications…
the workers were paid by the hour…no one
took time to look…what was noticed happened
in passing and was mentioned over whisky shots
at a locals’ bar just before closing…”whoever they
were they were cultured types”…that was agreed…
”but what ever they were they aren’t now…
too busy…freeway coming through…got
deadlines…got to clear space for tomorrow.”
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