On Your Feet

It was early August when we
Shaved our heads
Sold everything
Bought small arms and camping gear
Got tattoos
And flung ourselves under the wheels of a semi trailer
Going twenty-five
Across the countryside
On the back of a flatbed train car
At midnight
Through a Georgia graveyard.

We rode into the sunrise away from
Skies blackened by smoke and ashy embers
Emanating from Himalayan piles of immolated bridge timber

We knew god's country
In the Biblical sense
Flying over treetops
On mountainside tracks
Leaning out over trestled bridges
Staring down three hundred feet
At tiny blue water
Standing to arc a careful stream of piss
Exploding into our past like fireworks

Winking at startled drivers
Parked
Daydreaming
Sleepwalking
Through suburban hamlets
Most smiling
Some confused
Others angry
Jealous of our poetry quickening
To the cadence of trainsong.

We lived like wandering kung-fu monks
Fighting each other in the park to stay sharp
Selling our blood
Selling our time
Selling our bodies and lives
And anything else we could spare or steal

Sticking knives in fratboys'
Jeep tires after the bars closed
Hiding from the cops
In a tent
On the north side of an overgrown lot
In the black part of town
Between the train tracks
And all the bars.

I remember Jambalaya
And Shrimp po-boys
Psychadelic feces from too much
Cheap kool-aid and Killians
Pepper spray wasted on
Two dogs, a duck, and a mosh pit
Killing squirrels with pizza crusts
And the guy from Driving Miss Daisy.

What's the word?
Thunderbird?
What's the price?
Buck-fifty, twice.
And what felt like retching death in the greyhound bathroom.

Redbeard and his friend the dwarf
Pissing on windshields for a six pack of beer
While some pervert pleasured himself inside
And all their stories
About Mary Jane Rottencrotch

Black Jesus
With pinprick pupils in wide ice blue eyes
Muttering to himself.
Some people are born to be homeless,

Some of us just pass through to watch
That nubian princess cry
When she hears the Pretenders sing
"I'll stand by you"
At the top of every hour
On FM107.

We cried together
When I took her virginity
After a long day workin at the car wash.

Now I know about New Orleans,
And the secrets the city hides in the open,
And the things that go on when nobody's watching
And where to get a sausage mufalata
Worth killing for

I know where you got your shoes
Betcha ten dollars.

I saw the little boys
Dance tap for a hat full of coin
And I knew I had made the right decision,
So I threw my last dollar
To the blind saxophonist
Playing Yesterday.