I once fell asleep in a boxcar
Crawled in to get out of the weather
Seeing my breath in the air
Seeing rain fall from a blackened sky
Made it an easy choice for the making
This box of steel wheels of rolling
Would be my home for that moment
But the boxcar was not rolling
And I wasn’t a Hobo
I was not even a poet
But my mind was taking in all of the world that was around me
Sub-notes for the pen
For the paper
That would follow years later
A slide-show that every writer depends on
For if you are not in this world taking your punches
Your writing will be dull and tasteless
You have to experience it
All of it
Good or bad
Feeling those cold nights when alcohol fools your body
Into believing your outside is as warm as your inside
Burning from cheap rum in a bottle
With friends that were alive but less than savory
Now
Looking back
Is the only way I can see the wild ones
From that time and place where we didn’t care about tomorrow
Some passed away and are sleeping
Sleeping in the sweet southern grounds of our home
Some went to prison never to be free again
Few escaped either fates handed out by the card-puller of destiny
Yet sometimes I still see them you know
Working together or just hanging out
Like nothing was ever the different
Then I wake from my dream sick from the realness
The realness of it all is too much to stomach
And now I sit sleepless
Listening to the rain fall outside my window
When I know the same rain is falling outside of their cell
Or down on the plush green grass of their graves
And I remember that time in the boxcar
With no where to go
It’s corrugated steel walls were home for a day
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