Bob

was this bum in west Phoenix

who took a ride in my

first van which

I also lived in

and

on some nights

he as well

not like I shared the

van with his

dirty ass

but on a few nights when I was

with a girl in her place or

on the couch of a friend

in the neighborhood

Bob would somehow break in

and pass out in the back

the first morning I found him

in there I had driven half way to

Flagstaff with a girl

when my sleeping

bag shifted and

farted and

a grizzled voice

said

JESUS

and he farted again

and said

JESUS

and

the van was filled

with the smell

and I pulled over and

the girl jumped out and

I jumped out and

picked up a

dirt clod

from the shoulder of

17 North

and I opened the back door

and pulled the

sleeping bag off

and the smell

of another one

wafted

out from the bag

and nearly made us

puke

and I drove his

bum ass

back to the west side

and dropped him off

then made the drive back

to Flagstaff

and the girl thought

I had

compassion

which maybe

I did

but I also

had a grudge against

Bob because

I had to work

and he made

thirty dollars a day

plus food

-mainly pizzas

and candy bars-

standing on the corner

of 83rd and Indian School

cardboard sign in hands:

VIETNAM VET:

will work for food.

whether Bob was really a soldier

I’ll never know

On the nights when he and I would talk

he never once mentioned the war

instead he talked,

overweight

though his gut and long red beard

about other bullshit

I eventually escaped that place at 17 years of age

and when I returned there two years later

with a different van

Bob was gone

he had been shot through the head

and died crossing the street

looking for help

I drove around the old neighborhood

for four or five minutes

then jumped on the freeway

heading west

to Los Angeles.