Life Ain't Perfect, but It's Beautiful

I went out on my own – just followed the open road that led me into the unknown.
Sometimes, when life gets numb, you gotta take heed to the feelings that come and follow em.
Come across slick streets and beggars at truck stops, all-night girls and lovers at bus stops, comedians in bars drinking their jokes down.
Find the grey skies or where trains sigh by, where you’re lost but lovin’ it, sad but can’t cry, away from what’s known, friends and loved ones, all on your own and fallin’ snow’s your lullaby.
Cause I’ve seen a tennis match and I shouldn’t live like that. I oughta wander like a stoic cat and watch the rain pitter-pat.
When you fall asleep on a pitch dark road and you wake up in your car to mountains that glow under the risin sun reflectin off the ice and snow;
where it rains so much steps are covered in moss, where the fog’s so dense you’re lost in your own backyard;
when you coast down a mountain into plains that roll across an arid desert that formed long ago, and everything you see is sun-burnt red or gold;
where wind cyclones down through pines or you pick grapes through a New Mexican sunrise,
do you see God?
Somewhere out there beyond routine; somewhere paddlin through the jet-stream; somewhere growin in a forest of pine trees, somewhere farther than any hawk could see, somewhere closer than you are to me and everywhere in between, do you see God?
When you’re tryin to get to shelter and it’s seven degrees, and that don’t even matter cause she’s just so sweet, and her smile peaks through her chattering teeth;
where expression’s just a cloud or a child that points and says, “Daddy, don’t that look just like a unicorn?” and Daddy see’s it too, cause Daddy never gave up.
He pays the bills after playin with his child; his marriage ain’t perfect but disagreements are mild; and at least once a week the whole family does something wild.
Where church is a treehouse, God is a chapel mouse, to pray we roughhouse and love is worship.
When we realize the sun shines even behind cloudy skies and with each rain we’re baptized, we’ll all be saved.

Disjointed Memorized Words from a Cell

My reflection drips from the steel bunk above me.
White brick reflects flourescent light that glows from the corner.
My bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and study are all within reach
Inside this joint on E. Hickory. Once green prairie,
They try to replace Dionysis with roads –
Oak, Sycamore, Pecan – named such to tell us what they took away
In the name of Justice, Law, and Order.
But Apollo cannot survive on her own. Cells must be filled
With those who live organic; those who say,
“this is where I find myself on account of my vice.”
Some lose their liver, some lose metabolism, I missed a party.
Who said freedom is free? I gotta pay 500 dollars to get out
Tomorrow so I can join my family for mother’s day.
Men always write about the ladies they let down,
However, I cannot write, for they kept my pen.
So I lay here and recite aloud to myself in isolation.

As News Spread

Jack sat alone. Seven o’clock, Saturday morning, within cinder block walls and one door with a single window and a gap like a ticket booth through which food is passed, room service pounded on the other side of the door, shouted, “Breakfast!”
Jack stepped off his cot, across the cold concrete floor, and took the microwaved biscuits.
“You want coffee?”
“Yes, please. Is there any way I could get a pen?”
“A what?”
“A pen, to write.”
“No, we don’t issue those,” and the man walked off.
Jack stepped to his steal stool, sat at the steal table implanted into the wall, and ate slow. He wasn’t hungry. Eating passed the time. First he ate the top half of the biscuit, half the sausage, the bottom half of the biscuit, then finished the second half of the sausage, sipping coffee with each bite. He went to the window and looked out, as if looking across a back porch; across a green field where morning birds come and go, grasshoppers flick dew off blades of grass, caterpillars squinch and stretch across leaves; but Jack saw none of that. He saw cinder block walls, a desk, a finger print machine, yellow tape to direct people where to stand for their photo. To his right, Jack read a sign that hung on the wall: “Guidelines for obtaining classifiable fingerprints.” He discovered his right thumb has an irregular print – his only point of pride during his 17 hours in that room.
A room like that diminishes a person. Cold metal, cold stone, emotionless colors. Nothing to stimulate the mind, but they don’t want that. Nothing to stimulate the soul. The one thing that kept Jack’s spirit alive was the thought of how high Ryan must have been to tell the two arresting officers, so nonshalantly, “We’re writers and this is such griss for the mill.”
Jack waited. Time passed like a locomotive unable to gain pace. The flourescent lights never changed and endlessly buzzed their sterile white light. The sounds were the same over and again – the clasp of a door lock, rollrollrollroll of the telephone rollrollrollrollroll, a flushed toilet several doors down, shouts of frustrated arrestees, shouts of jaunty arresters.
“I suppose I’m to consider my life choices and path?” Jack thought. He paced the floor and grew embittered at such wasted time.

Perch

I sit perched at the junction of a window ledge and a ladder. Two cars are parked on the other side of this tree. One’s silver, the other’s black. The black one’s a Chrysler, I think, but what’s that really matter? One of two A/C units blows beneath me. The one just below me waits until the weather gets warmer. Every window on my floor is open, except for one that’s in a closet. I painted it already. I painted all these windows. It’s taken quite a long time, with all the prep work and rain. But they’re done. So are the eaves, for the most part. But I’ve yet another task tomorrow before it’s completely finished. And, well, I gotta paint what I fix on the eaves again. This job never seems to end! At least with the next job, I imagine, I’ll have some creative liberties. I’m off to write.