Blood in the morning
Up and down I5 from Burbank to Seattle, working with a toothless [meth] redneck and being wired on fatigue, driving that hairy little freak around
the west with me under his delusion that he
was my boss, and to be fair, I liked the guy
especially when he wore both his uppers
and lowers when the crew went out to eat together
but there was something about the guy that forbade me from
completely hating him, a sense of family I felt with
him that made me both easy and disgusted, and also
kind of fascinated
the things we didn't have in common kept
the miles balanced
-like his love for the job: building heavy, collapsible
barns for horse shows, the builds and the tear-downs, which always
meant walking through horse shit, breathing it, getting it in
your cuts and socks
-and his love for the actual boss: a little British guy with a jail tattoo of a sock saint
on his shin, sandals and white socks, always, who drove the pallets of
panels and doors and canvas around with his wife in their
twin semis
-and his gratefulness for having that job because
where he came from, and all other factors considered,
the job was his career
and on most nights when we slept on site
I would watch the sky and feel the oddest
sense of hypocrisy/accomplishment knowing that I'd just
built 13 barns that day
but also feeling free in the sense that I was a ghost
on the road
no cell phone, no bank account, no traces or trail or tail
just the road and the dirt and the metal panels,
mistakes that shed blood in the cold
mornings, or created an immediate blood blister popped by
an old nail reluctantly sterilized by a splash of coffee
and waking up in the sleeping bag and looking over
at the little redneck sleeping
half in and half out of a sleeping bag which
I ended up paying for, realizing he was only 27 or so
with that many miles on his skin, that many demons
that took away his teeth
-and me there with across from him
waking up under the Sun in Marymoore, or Mt. Hood, or Diamond Springs,
or Woodside, or SoCal, and once even all the way over in Albuquerque
-but sitting up and stretching my spine while watching
the little bastard snore on his back
his full body perm grossly lit by the
sky
looking around to see if we
were lucky enough to have
an outlet near so I could set out
my folding table and chair
and plug in my electric
to write stories, poems, letters
and another thing about the redneck, the crew, even the
Brit and his wife: on the nights or down time in the afternoons
when they heard the machine, they stayed their distance
which also challenged my perceptions of them
but not enough to where I didn't quit after a year
and go on to other Hells comical and tragic, peppered in
through the good times, also
-strange
how the good times
become easy to forget
while writing
poetry
Anyway, sitting here now, coffee coursing perfectly
-big ass leather chair, at my desk in my study
remembering the old jobs, but mostly that job
and the redneck, the boss and his wife, and also the ones who
showed up to work and were either lazy or weak or smart enough to
walk away after
a day's pay
-Sitting here now, while the sunlight reaches in and spikes
my home, while a car waits outside that I
KNOW will start every morning
but also while I sit here and
think about how
good those days might have
been for me
had I seen
this coming.