This poem originally appeared in Dreams of The Motherland (2002), one of my 9 poetry chapbooks self-published between the years 1999-2004:
I don’t live in the system
Not this fool
I’m just camping out there awhile
How could we think it the only way?
I spend my days facing fears, one by one
I spent the years of my youth & my life
searching for America
Scaling rustic roads
through the heart of a land misunderstood
Drifting over long, empty
wild & silent highways
like a sheltered beast put out to graze
Wearing the desolate night sky like a blanket
cold & lonely as it was
Drinking summer storms
through every pore of my soul
Existing from roadside stop to stop
Embracing every broken town like art
then leaving tumbleweed sidewalks behind
Never staying, always running, rolling away
Looking for lost country
Neutralizing a haunted identity
Looking to live a simple life
Always looking
for traces of an old-fashioned world
which was fast disappearing
swallowed by the artificial dreams
of old monster time
Great pictures, brave poem. Love the pic of you on the red, red rock.
Thank you!
Yes great poem and wonderful photos.
Thank you very much!
“embracing every town like art” – that’s excellent.
I enjoyed this much. And your pictures. Cheers
Thanks so much for your encouraging comment, and for taking the time…
Hi Unsung, you have a way with your words.. “”Wearing the desolate night sky like a blanket
cold & lonely as it was Drinking summer storms through every pore of my soul”" loved the photos and can only imagine such a lonely night out under that starlit blanket xxx Hugs Sue
Thanks Sue! I described it how I felt it, all true story…ah those years when everything was somewhat lighter and it seems like I lived a dozen lives in a year’s time…