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.