Sour breath gritty men, lost apostles
\nOn double rails to nowhere
\nBut warm. They gave up addresses,
\nFamilies, jobs, birth names, sheets.<\/p>\n
Men with faces like relief
\nMaps the color of smoke.
\nHigh Rail Red,
\nWoody, Memphis, all lamented<\/p>\n
El Paso Pope\u2019s failed leap
\nLeaving his lower legs on the tracks.
\nAnd Boston Bobby found blue in a boxcar,
\nDoors slammed shut on a Rockies\u2019 siding.<\/p>\n
Apple wine, cigarettes, canned
\nPeach halves and saltines
\nCould get Red to his twenty dollar
\nBills stashed in Folgers cans scattered<\/p>\n
From Hope, Arkansas to Portland.
\nA summer in the saddle of a big Cat,
\nGovernment checks for a mental breakdown,
\nA man could stay gone for years, forever.<\/p>\n
Who sleeps on cardboard, wheels going sixty,
\nSteel to steel roar and teeth rattling
\nIn heads loosed by blackberry wine and regret
\nFor something they chose to forget.<\/p>\n
I was a student hobo with an Am Ex,
\nImport beer in my backpack,
\nLove letters from my Italian Princess,
\nA knife for killing. They laughed.<\/p>\n
Diesel soot stories of ghostly men disconnected
\nStill mystifies. I watch from the interstate now
\nSix engines disappear in a dark West Texas storm.
\nI nod and push homeward for bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"