the gift

Asleep, I held a small child in my hands, six weeks six months
We were at the beach, I think, and I said things to rouse a smile

The babe looked very happy, and I handed it back to its mother

I then dreamt I was myself a small child, no more than six

Sitting alone in an old porcelain bath, the room very quiet

I held a large gem the size of my hand. a flower cut into quartz

With small motions it seemed to hum and play a strange music

Sounding like windchimes or a dozen windup carillons
The craftsmanship seemed infinitely intricate, I marveled

And gently handed it back to the water

The shuffled deck

A drunk native w a revolver in his hand
Told me there were six spokes in custers throat
beneath bighorns last stand w six fingered ribbons
preserved in parrafind sand
And that a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

But there was a couple kissing in heaven
That looked maybe seven whose hands held only five
And seven were their daughters singing
That the eight hides where the spades reside
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Elephants are good for many things, poachers
Use nightscopes, Kenyans cable snares
Tanzania cyanide
They take them down before the ivory is gouged
From out the living brow
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Baileen too, whales are used for collars and glue
For them there is penthrite or a cold harpoon
I watched one die smiling in the rip tide
good blubber gone all down its spine
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Less lucrative though no less necessary, debarking a dog
Although easier I hear just taking the ears
Sticks and stones w nothing to mind,
They incise at the throat
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Others in the courtroom or bed blow for blow
w leashes or sometimes lines of coke
I like to reign them by the hair and ride
dig an elbow in, or over a chair until they’re broke
And a rose sleeps in the Gemini.

Like the temple I’m looking at now, a chancel fire
Against the clouds, looking more like a giant well
Or some ancient lighthouse somebody felled
From whatever brimstone sea from begone seas
Of places and purpose whose name escapes me.

And the fennec descends from the morning light
Like a blood born bard to Eurydice twice
Like Jerusalem in etamine when Judith came
Defenestrate w the head of epimanes
And Ive already robbed the sun dye.

The guest house

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

I spring w bandini

I Schlegel in the midnight hegels

I dream of jeannie

I stand w standing rock

I eat w ahab and drink with houdini 

I settle by candlelight vigils
I convulse in the entrails of oregon rails

And green is the blue in the starling hearth

and the black on its back over croft and garth

And eloquent the cries of gjallarhorns at war

in the somnolent skies of faraway lore

With a fistful of doves and a few dollars more
There is still wordsworth, still derrida, mozart 

Because home is the spring of the morning I left
Eyelids filled w your face in the dark

Its the phantom limb still lodged in my skull 

Asleep in a bed now skulls apart

Is to whisper again what I said to you then
the sands in your eyes that live in my heart

the unmarked grave

When I was a boy I was asthmatic. Not as much as I am now after some years of smoking but now and again it was severe enough that I would need to borrow an inhaler. But it only ever came on bad enough when we would visit my grandmothers in the country. We came from the mountains and the air was different, but I could usually opt to not spend too long outside in the pollen and dust and survived that way alright. But there were times I thought I might really suffocate, when there was no inhaler available. And lay awake all night scared and miserable to the point of delirium.

I once headed over the high line, not so long ago, looking for apple harvest work first and then anything at all.. And then there was one such occasion, similarly, when I thought maybe that was it. That I was going to die.

Getting around that year was beginning to be like pulling teeth already, with brand new scheduling having been recently introduced to the rails and I was seeing a lot of maintenance of way cutting through the length of it too. But it was also rough going because I was having these episodes of asthma that weren't normal for me and uncharacteristic for that time of year. I would spend a week here and a week there just getting off the coast and east. Seattle.. Everett.. Gold Bar.. Wenatchee.. Spokane.. and each hop taking longer as I got farther out into places I wasn't familiar with yet.

The aim was Missoula, but I never managed it. I was wearing out faster than I expected and getting lazy w the job search.. best I could do eastward was Spokane and after that I was ready to go look for a cup of coffee back in Portland somewhere and wait out the cold — time was up and winter was setting in quick by November out there, not even as far as Idaho. So I went back the other way. Down through Pasco toward the river and lower elevation.  

Pasco is still the high desert but it's got a lot of crop land and smells like drainage ditches and miracle grow. Lots of wind and brush and a lot of dust and things sounding like they're going to rip right out of the earth and hinges and blow clean away. And I was sitting out there one day in the sage land just beyond it waiting, watching BNSF operate. Hours into weeks and my breathing getting worse every day. Too cold and winded by everything to move.

I laid down in the dirt and looked up into the dark. Nothing improving on my back but too tired to sit upright, I listened to the crud in my lungs and it sounded like a creature apart from me in there. Creaking and shuttering away like a sunbaked old hay barn.

And I got angry and then scared and then angry again, and then — nothing. And I wondered finally if there wasn't anything I had to say for myself before all the words I ever knew all floated off into the wind and I with them. And if I was going to die alone was it going to be as alone as the tree that falls or as the dunes blow. Unknown, impossible.

And then I remembered, among many things, a dream I'd had once and I felt rich then and wanted to spit in the face of the world and I began to laugh, suddenly. My whole body racked with it and it sounded like the death rattle itself.

I was frightened, but then there was this obscene triumph.. and I thought yes, there was in fact something I wanted to say, offer up to the night before I sank forever back into it again. Something that I could have screamed. Gleefully, wildly, unrepentingly.. If I just had the wind left in me.

'I'm going to die here and not even the heavens will ever hear, not even w my face buried like this in their ear.'

But then I struggled up again into a sitting position and all the fluid moved aside for a little more air. And life cling to me, just so.. like a disease.

And for a long time I was obsessed w the image of a somebody, a body.. orating.. 

while all the neurons are dying and the brain 

begins firing all its first words.. indiscriminating.. 

conferring, w death itself only maybe. 

defiantly like.. the first 

grand constitution and bylaws in some crazy dream. 

Just as all the lights were burning out.

eleven minutes 2010

First I ever took somebody on a date
I took her to the waterfront and we got bent

We spent all day and into the dark
We spent all day and into the dark

We spent 
all day and there were

Bad moments and good ones
As friends
good friends shitfaced into dusk

But it was the first eleven minutes only
When I put on krautrock when we parked
And you will never understand

how stoned we were stoned then 
and how
alone w you and how
badly I wanted to hold your hand

April 5 2023

I Schlegel in the midnight hegels

Z7eE670lu6l

april 17

verboten

I think of all the things I would say to you
& contemplate the reason
For wanting to say them
I think of all the things Id wish to give you
& ask myself what it is
I have to give.
Silence. I want you to feel
What I feel when I have it

So let me write it to you
Let me tell you what I hear,
At this instant, of pressing
The p of this pen to the paper on my knee
Let me tell you
Why the oak trees are so gorgeous
And why the wind therefrom so pure
Tell you where and how.
What the leaves are doing
The clouds.
The spider lines trembling
Captured in the
Eternal open shutter of sunlight
Married
Buried by my eyes
And the wind, the wind, the wind.

re december 2016

Austin Tx, new years eve

Road some bnsf coal south out of denver. Thinking it'd get me to trinidad or amarillo.. When I woke the next morning we were in pueblo and went slinkin through it straight south to the refinery. I didn't even know what'd happened until I realized we were circling back almost in the other direction and stood up and saw it, the refinery just a mile down where the line ended. We were spiraling in on it. Way out there in the praries, pueblo co maybe 5 maybe 10 miles to the north.

Getting out again wasn't so bad. Took work and a bit of luck, but it's an alright little town. Like Witchita Falls. Not all unfriendly. Amarillo though, that was different. Amarillo was some of the most run down garbage for it's size I ever had the pleasure of leaving.

Yd was 100% visibility and nowhere to hide at all as for as the daytime went. But that's when you know lingerin around anyplace or walkin around it all too frequent is going to be as likely attracting attention from the locals as being seen on property itself, so as soon as I found an entrypoint I saw a geo eastbound ds pull in on the main and I thought 'well, better not hang around... here goes nothing... cross my heart, hail mary... hope I don't die!' I hadn't been there a full day but was so anxious to get out of there, purely out of revulsion, that I'd have taken my chances blindfolded. And I guess I may as well been, cause there was no way nobody saw me walkin on up to that thing through the lot. I think it might've been a sunday.. but I ran up and down that thing twice. First the back half, then the front.. and all I could find was suicide wells. There wasn't shit else.  'Well.. cross my heart, hope to die then. Fuck it.'

So I gingerly tucked my groceries and my case of beer up underneath inside the track, threw my bags over and dove in. Catching a brief glimpse of the bull or somebody in a big white truck pulling through a few strings over, as I dropped down into the well. I thought maybe they'd seen me and I got scared as hell for a little while. Expecting them to work their way back around my way. They didn't. But we didn't get moving again until the sky started dying on me and my beers down to just three.

Alright, fort worth. Here I come, fort worth. Gonna make it to austin by christmas, fort worth!

Fun fact. Amarillo's all bnsf trackage and they will take you five different directions. Northwest to denver, northeast to tulsa and kansas, east to dfw, south to lubbock, slaton, brownwood and temple.. And southwest to clovis and albuquerque.. new mexico. Not so fun fact: discerning between eastbound, southbound, and southwestbound trains might be a little difficult. And the south track doesn't even wye off to the west until you're well down it.

Six hours later I was somewhere out by the new mexico border, barrelling through the pitch darkness and freezing rain.. and barreling straight through clovis. Ffffffffffffffff. That means another six hours.

Standing up. Afraid I might fall asleep or else loosen my grip long enough for a jolt to throw me off the by then iced-over crossbeams.. I felt lucky I'd at least brains enough to be geared up for the winter weather, insulated coveralls and face mask etc the way I had, or I'd have had no choice but pull out the bivy and strap myself and all my gear to the rigging up on the porch.

Was soaked to the bones like an old scarecrow when we reached belen, finally, 8 or 10 hours later. But I was so glad to get off that thing I didn't even care anymore. I was so glad to be in belen I didn't even care it was the wrong direction. I was so glad to see lights that weren't headlights or highway billboards I didn't care anymore.
There was so much ice layered over the rocks, walking up the length of that thing for the second time.. trying not to break an ankle after all that anyhow was like pulling teeth. So tired. So, so damn tired.



Ft. Worth I didn't spend more than 10 hours either. It wasn't as desolate as amarillo or dark as clovis though. I walked through most of it in the early morning then got bored and wandered south of downtown to hit the coal again. It was weirdly empty, downtown and south of it. Ghostly. A lot of gutted shops and pavement that didn't look hardly driveable anymore. Even the bum I encountered under the bridge at the hopout north of the abandoned plant, rider paraphanilia and discarded junk everywhere, was weirdly despondent. He'd showed up a little after to smoke something.. and he was still standing there staring off into space an hour later when my southbound came through.

On the way down it was mostly just a lot of pasture land and a country route running right along. Sun still out, clear skies and thunderheads towering up to the east, setting up to rip ass on all ten country cunts and cows out there somewhere.

As soon as I sit up to snap some pictures of all this, there's another train holed up on the oncoming siding and before ducking down I see them standing out next to the head counting cars and I looked at the engineer and the engineer looked at me... Oh, shit. Somebody must've called me in, a passing car on the highway maybe.

I pulled out the scanner and dialed in the rail channels.. chatter.. noise.. chatter.. stop.. go back.. what's that.. there it is. They were saying they spotted me and askin my crew to pull into the next siding and they'd have em waiting for me. Ohh, shit. Oh, shit.

I throw all my things together and zip up. Kick the coal around a little bit and dig in a little deeper and huddle down against the corner. For what. For coal? You're tellin me you're gonna arrest me for riding your fuckin coal..

Ten minutes and we're stopped. A couple of doors slam fifty feet off somewhere and I can hear a couple of them talking and walking the ballast. I hear their radio. Somebody climbs up the ladder of some car nearby.. nothing.. climbs back down..

ballast.. rungs on the car directly ahead of mine.. they get to the top.. quiet.. I hold my breath.

The only thing I can hear is the little plastic bag full of food, deep in the corner of the container, moving slightly in the breeze. Somebody might as well have been ripping open a bag of chips for how loud it was to me and I thought that was it. But it was really windy, and for how I dug myself down against the wall, they might not've seen or heard anything. I'll never know for sure.. But I almost feel like maybe they were just feeling generous that day.. cause they just climbed on back down without a word and were gone.

Maybe they checked the next container, but they didn't stay long because the train kicked forward again right away.

Mixed feelings. Bewildered.. stupified.. Didn't know what to think. But that I made damn sure and stay the fuck down the rest of the way.

december 2016

Wichita Falls, 12/25

Made it to texas. Only been a couple of winters and I'm already headed back for austin. I've put this year through as much hell as I did the one before it and carved two giant circles into the lower 48 between them.

I wanted to try the rockies on for size this winter, so dived down the overland for my third or fourth go but hatching back instead this time down to the south and east into ogden via green river, wyo. I wasn't even sure where else after that but I knew I wanted for certain to go and see if I couldn't bag an east over the mountains. One hoped that denver would handle the rest I guess. And you know it did, cause three days and I'd seen enough. It handled me alright.

Provo yd was strange. Couldn't pick a spot that put one at ease to save my life, the way yd duty would go skirting around all five corners of the A, day and night. I went in by the west bridge on the first evening and then mosied over to the east one by midnight the next.. First thinking that the jungle in the middle there was going to be camp-worthy, until I seen work trucks parking right in there by it not long after noon pretty frequently, either on a smoke break or patrol. Took me a few days, dancing around for warmth there in intervals, steel toe boots and the snow.

And on the third day it was only when I was leaving over that bridge to go try for the macaroni at salt lake that they'd listed in the 2013/14 updates when I noticed a bnsf manifest, on trackage rights, laying over for a new crew further down in the yd itself. 

When I went to investigate there was cats and dogs brought down all the sudden and then hail too for a good hour altogether. I tried to be as low profile as I could but once I cut in right on up next to the train in question and hopped over the other side for better cover / less visibility between strings, I discovered that the far string was a maintenance line and there was a crew of welders, busy running a bead while I passed and who I only hoped wouldn't notice me. They heard my feet on the ballast I guess though, and I could hear them after passing, exclamations of disbelief behind me through the torrents of hail.. Look there goes one now, jack..

The ride was about 30 hours and I was damned hungery by noon of the second day. Hungry but happy; There were times of brilliant sunshine over the pass, skating cautiously through like a windsail somewhere round about 25 mph through a bright snow perfumed winter wonderland, gold and green when I awoke the next day in the late noon as the sun was still deciding on just where to bed in all the snow caked forrest it ever dreamed of eating. I wished then that I hadn't burned my phone dead shooting a video the previous evening when we'd departed, all radiant as christmas carols, sledding through a nightstand nativity of baby jesus and whipped cream.

I will have to find that line again -- and jump off!.. Wait until spring, bandini.

God but the cold. I could do nothing but stay locked up deep in my bedding. Getting out only to pee and to stretch, and then it was a real ordeal.. not at all pleasant but for the first couple of minutes, spent mostly just unwrapping and climbing out of the double barrel.. which I was, in retrospect, very lucky to have found. It was the only double punched grain container on the whole train, and the best shelter anyone could ever hope to find on it at that. But for an open box of course and I don't think that order even carries empty boxes typically.
When we first stopped during the day (for like 5-6 hours, good lord), I first thought when I began to feel like it to climb off and have a look around and get some air in my veins but on stepping down discovered the snow to be a lot more than I guessed.. it was kneedeep. I didn't feel like getting out for a walk much after that. Not because I wasn't layered enough for it, but because my feet were stiff and I was feeling a little weak, hungover more like, and it was all I could do to keep toes thawed without the steel toes on and wading in ice was not going to be the solution to this.

Rolling in on denver then on the eve of it so to speak while there was still daylight lighting up the farthest expanses,  coming in on top of it on a winding track winding down off the back of the rocky moutains. Stepping down the grade like a snake switching back over itself down the trunk of a tree, sun behind you and the east a bleached rolling plains dyed peaches reds and purples as far as the eye. A plot of grey metropolis somewhere in the center of it frost bitten and relatively featureless from that distance... but what a distance. And from that height on the way down I wished again, terribly, that I'd still batteries in the phone enough to ask your photograph.

Rolling in on denver then, rolling in on denver.. It was even colder thanks to the twilight hour and it's not sixty seconds before your fingers are all gone rolling up the belongings all dry ice inside of that grainer when we finally ground to a stop at north yd. Or maybe 48th street I don't know right now. The one relatively center but fairly west of town also. And the adrenaline, oh god.. sometimes you kinda just have to expect the worse. Because you can't hear or see anything at all out of those things, and there's not seeing a floodlight if it fixed on you until you were well out on the porch of it.

Disembarked that son of a bitch and there I was, Denver! Denver then.. land ho... Snows even deeper now and I can't feel my hands nor any of my toes about as soon as I jumped down off the final rung of that ladder.. And I'm so goddamn starved and my waters all frozen and shit and I'm not sure I'd have noticed there were an SUV black or white or red if it were 10 cars away. Was lucky enough though that we'd pulled in on the last track west side and there was nothing but 40-50 someodd paces wading as I was, to the edge of rail property and to safety -- not even a fence to vault over.. Twice lucky aye.

But there was somewhat an embankment there waiting for me and in 2 and a half feet of snow it took about ten minutes to crawl up this little hill that couldn't have been any more than 10 feetsworth I swear to god.. Gasping and grasping and weezing from the effort of it and the whole time looking back over my shoulder for the yard dog any second now. The fattest I have ever felt in my whole life. I felt like a beached fucking whale. Have I used that yet? Whatever... Anyway when I dragged myself past the final couple feet of sleet, wrenching my bags up alongside me like a couple of logs, I lay down for something like another 5-10 minutes recovering and eating snow to cool down again. Cold does that, too. Guts all busted and the ride I just left not a hundred feet away nor cop nor camera anywhere.

I stayed at a motel that night. It's weird sometimes how you can have no idea whatsoever which way you're going but wind up heading in the right direction. And then the next night stayed at the squat down the road I'd found by pecos bridge where the coal like to stop. I watched that coal track for half the night and it didn't seem to be doing the things just the same as it used to as far as I could tell, and I even went out and walked the length of one of them once to see where they'd stuck the dpus, mid-train or back. Not a soul else but myself there that night - though not a big surprise when it's 5 degrees in or out.. And when I decided it was late enough I layed out a squat mattress somebody had so thoughtfully leaned up lengthwise against the wall, so as to avoid it's being snowed on through the empty windows.