I sing a song of my self
and it is the dirge of my people.
One life’s mistake
fixed with a searing snip
and the smell of well-handled steak.
End of the line.

Buck stops here, Bucko!
I won’t be making all of my father’s mistakes -
just most of them.
I won’t die loveless
but I will die alone.
A ghost,
a memory,
a story,
an impression.

Oh, I will leave an impression.
Prep your RVs and tin foil satellite dishes!
Conspire in tattered lawn chairs
and anticipate my arrival.
For I am the meteor’s crater.
I will be a Roswell rumor
and a desert song,
told in the dunes of Barstow,
unchecked by the checkpoints
on roads traveled only by cargo -
human and otherwise.

Never go to Barstow.
It is filled with people like me.
A mecca for the dropouts
and the burnouts
and the sellouts
and the down-and-outs
lost in arroyos flooded
with unexpected doubts.

The pumps are as dead as the denizens -
the bleached bones of Morrison covers
and rusty rallies and journalist pilgrims,
gone gonzo on things worse than ether.
They are my people.

The people who sing the songs of themselves -
Sonnets of sadness,
long life lines
and tragic love lines,
Slanted rhymes and broken times.
The unkillable,
The unlovable,
The alone,
The free.