The sleeplessness is a valley that gives way to the high plains with rivens and canyons at sunrise as the rays spill over plateaus and flood the low lying land red with clay, and some with sand

And the rays dance on surfaces and kiss all the eyes that squint in deference to their majesty in this golden hour when hope and ideas are as fresh as the cool, dry air that seems so steadily swift in its persistent progression to who knows where

In this vast place that’s open like a mind should be unencumbered left to dream and love and to care for despite the duality that’s in the wind and sweeps this space, the dark drained into day and the light dazzled then settled in repose until it drains into dark when it’s time to sleep again

I drift into that same valley I never left, cold and stiff, awash in sharp silver silk-like moonlight, illuminating still stained septic streams hanging over sagebrush and undulated high plains, predictably breached by plateaus reaching to the Milky Way, a 6 lane highway across the heavens

Take me on the sun street in the night sky so I can look down on the antiquated analogue playscape driving deliberately digital where they look like grasshoppers playing cowboys and businessmen and schoolchildren so well never knowing it’s a tired play that keeps going, rolling on as night rolls on, endlessly and relentlessly, like the land itself

Telling a story we care to hear parts of only if we’re intrigued by the predilection of others, and when the story concludes maybe I’ll finally wake up from my maddening sleeplessness and at last, I’ll fall awake and find myself steady

The hours running late, and I’m all alone

Tomorrow I’ll be stomping, stomping on the Stone

When I wear the boots, I put em to the test,

Because I know tomorrow, tonight I gotta rest.

I’m a rugged guy, living on a dare-

Sitting in the dark, not going anywhere

It rains and it thunders, its wild outside-

I’ve seen it all before, and so I can’t abide

Getting lost again, my boots good and worn

I barely turned a page, then the page is torn

Tell em how yer rugged, rugged wit yer boots

Then tell a tale, a story of yer roots,

Tell it to em straight and tell it to em wild

Tell about the last time that you even smiled

Back as a boy, I never needed steel toes,

Those are the days, a youngin hardly knows

Rugged in my boots, rugged in my mind,

Desperate for relief, of The Holy kind,

May God help my feet, and my weary head

As I stomp the streets, til I’m nearly dead!

Steels not the only, only tips that I spit

Of the tips you know, most you will forget

Just like wind, sweeping Texas plains,

Sweeping up lies, burying remains,

Hoot, holler, yer free to scream and shout,

What it is, what it was, and what’s it all about

All wearing boots, looking kinda tough

Rugged with their tips, their faces real rough

Tell em they’re new, like the money on the hill

Tell em it’s a war and it’s shoes you gotta fill

Stomp upon the concrete, cold at the dawn

When the sun is up, the stompers are all gone.