the huntsman

Drifting through this press of castellated steel and concrete, there's been word of the old cat I met back at the gallows. I don't know what he's up to these days, some have seen him watching jeopordy in the dinner hall in a hospital bed malaised, some working in the 5th street garden they said in a ball cap and cordoroy or puffing a cigar, streaks of gray whisked round his head. Or playing hangman at the park on the bricks in sidewalk chalk, in a crowd of lunch kids tall as a corn stalk. Myself I thought I saw him on front street once stood in a window striking a match, turning round only found a young attorney in tweed checking his watch. 

And in the papers they say there's danger on the edge of town, I hear shouts in the alleys and the parking garages, loud sirens calling up the 90 or on broadway or paramount. They've seen fires at the precinct and I heard a clerk say sams bakery is also gone up in smoke, I think. I don't know what it's all about, and I keep hearing 'crazy times these' and 'funny that', but today I'm wondering about that bloke the one with the bow tie and cane. With the wheezy stare and a wheel of fortune grin. Where is that old man, whatever happened to him.

A flodgin peddler wandered through yesterday with the tribune. Thats watches rings nickles and knives, and three dollar bills that rhyme with plumes. I asked his name he said ben, ben from everclear and I kicked down a wad of fifteen fins. Offered a seat he pulled up a chair tossing me a luckystrike and set his derby down over the fare, 'Remember that Lorie w the trunk you know I think they called me up the other day'

I asked him what about, but saying nothing fished into his pockets and presented a rock his hand stretched out, just some rock and says there's danger on the edge of town. 

'you still on the mephedrone, guy? what was it about'

'can't you see it writ there, fires, and a lighthouse'

Squinting, I motion warily for the bottle and he throws the duffle up on to the table next to the hat.

'I was seeing my brother about a gun out in Roanoke. Two quarts and an old coach. He lives up the drive on a few acres of trees. What's a roan billy fish hawk like you need with a hitch I said and he says he's got a couple out to buy his ford and they want his wood too. And I say but no gun huh.. "Protestants".

What's a city slicker like you need with a gun. Look, move along with your news we're not all daft, I can read too, and no more passages from the sunday oatmeal, I think I've got something I have to get to now..

'We went out to the back to fetch the piece and there's deer, a whole family of them maybe ten or fifteen, grazing. I said these your animals? they don't look scared. He says the rivers been right flush with the buzzards since the tackle shop down the way closed up and "wait watch this, hold on and you just watch".

So he loads it up..

'No. He goes inside and returns w an apple. Walks out to them casual as livestock and sits down at the first stump, ten or fifteen feet between and with a bowie knife in hand offers the apple up in the other'.

12 31 2016

Hitched down into austin tx this time from Temple. A lot less picturesque than the first go round, when I had rolled in out of Hearne / Houston / conjunction Kirby and san anton. And not nearly as much fun. I lasted like five days total after reaching austin, and then changed my mind about everything. Mission failed successfully.

Had been told before to look at slaughter siding for camping spots. And came in w the intention of doing so while I tried to go unbreak my bank account for a little while.

Under slaughter bridge there's a whole pack of riders. like ten of them. it was like finding leprachauns.

Two of them have got the kind of train grease on them you'll only see on the genuine articles that've been riding since regan and probably carrying more narcan in their packs than anything else. I still have the girls breakup texts to her babydaddy on my phone.

I sit down in a circle with the other six and give a nod to each, exchanging names, and set a fifth of sailor jerry in the middle next to somebody's pack of smokes. They're all good kids, roughly my age maybe slightly less but I don't look but half my own in the first place of course. With the exception of Mr tough guy hawaiian shirt to my left who claims to have just completed a tour of the south and looks like he could be my fat cousin. He does most of the talking and I let him.. Raising him only with the bottle every couple minutes. I'm surprised with how well I get along with the other four and we seem to want me to go along with them to san marcos and wait for a northbound there for a moment. 

There's an even better looking girl that left down the tracks searching for her boyfriend, who I already know I'd seen leaving the other direction, the one I'd come in from walmart. They'd had a group of blacks come through shortly before I arrived.. apparently they zero'd in on boy toy up the road for their opening act and slapped him around a little to exercise authoritah.. If I was smart I'd have followed the girl down the track with the pretense of telling her she was going the wrong way, but I"m not that smart unfortunately and was more about sitting down and getting drunk in the sun.

I gave hoola man the two tabs of leftover acid in my wallet. I warned him they were real, but of course he insisted my dare was good and he ate them immediately. Boasting that his awesomeness level only increases with every tab. He didn't say it like that but it was something to that affect and that's when I decided I was going to finish getting drunk and leave instead of watching him finish making an ass of himself.

Later woke up in the dark on the other side of the tracks, to shouts of beligerant threats and intermittant gunshots. Assuming the gang of blacks had returned for round two.. but it could just as well have been fatass losing his shit all by himself. I was 200% trashed still unable to stop the stars from spinning. And very glad I had the sense in my inebriation to disappear while I was still able to walk.

Not a minute of sleep for what remained of the night. After gunshots I thought it wise to move along north somewhere and find somewhere more quiet. But the first spot I found had a dog on the other side of the fence. The second, further up, there was yet another gang of rather violent sounding young black folk who heard me in the bushes through the dark and had come searching for me, specifically me no two ways about it, keen on discouraging homeless from staying anywhere on their turf. And spent the proceeding 2 hours running from them. Jumping fence after fence through suburban backyards, a few dogs on the way, to afford myself a headstart. Later dissappearing into yet another greenbelt full of trees, next to the tracks.

And there, just as I'd bedded down in the pitch dark and before dozing off, I heard what I could only assume was a bull elk or a very big worthog. Passing through, not 30 feet away. I could almost feel it's hoofs hit the ground. It made it very clear for me too that it knew I was there but was not sure just where.. stomping and blowing air out it's nose very loudly. I suppose its possible it may also have been a horse. But the thing sounded too angry and I could only imagine a moose, although I knew that was impossible too.

I waited for the thing to leave me 50 feet slack and then scrambled away back to the tracks.

I scouted the tracks for another few hours until the fireworks quieted and the dawn crept out. Nothing good. Nowhere to lay low and leave my things.

I gave up and doubled back to slaughter. Seeing the headlamp of a train down on the siding. And said goodbye to texas. 

Road to memphis. Just over the mississippi... Explored the city, and then left the same night on a train straight back to Socal where I fucking belong. Hitting Sweetwater Texas for a brief layover, to avoid getting pulled off by border patrol in the middle of the desert on the intermodal out of Marion. 60 hours by general manifest, from there to LA, stopping just about everywhere. 5 hours outside of pecos. 3 in alfalfa yd in el paso, 3 in santa teresa at the border, 2 hours each in one ghost town and another.

One hour, staring into the blue sunbaked miles between pillar after red pillar somewhere in southern arizona. 2oz of water left. The sand smells like my ex's panties.

welcome to ehrenberg

We filed quietly onto the open grass

Dawn calls first dimly down

violent at the ramparts

somber in the first and jade fingertips

I like to remember.

Drenched in felt

swallowed 

as the sun stricken in stone

each of us alcoves alone  

smoked and

silent as no ember

badges at our breast

elite and numberless

as the the foxtails 

chests full of thistles and florets.

Sure as the burs on the bull in the heather

as the pride of all our savior fathers

as the flood of the love

shoulder to knees

for our daughters and mothers

and lovers back home

to whom we'd sacrifice anything

or ourselves dive readily
drop like alkaloids out of the ether
black as a sun behind the ramparts
I like to remember.

Some rumored us cloven statesmen

or barons 

in town they ruled apartheid

Some said we came from the forest 

others 

smugglers from the lower rhine

Gamma rushed first

Delta thrice behind

The hairs on my neck stood

when they met the north wall

circling down over the open side

The rest we went west to find

A straggler or a visitor

a naive or a slave 

however meek 

however blind

We filed quietly into the vacant halls

Zeta calls first, a grim sound

Violent in the silence and somber

It was a disappointment

I like to remember.

There had been a coup

And the dissenters we believed

had come here to pray

I put my hands in my pockets 

anstatt hof watching walked away

the only remaining occupant 

was a hanging bolshevik 

wrong castle, wrong day