Your Words

Crow Dog, my pack, slumps by a rusted glider couch under an old oak that drips with Spanish moss soundlessly. We have seen alot, this pack and I. My hands move sweat up through my hair. Is it thinner I wonder. Does it matter anymore I think to myself; hair, skin, clothes. Everything has become words, words on their way back to dust. Words have become the ruining sun that weakens the threads of my shirts until they are rags I iron with my hands like crazy people do. Words are the police that rest one hand on their pistol, as they wait for me to save myself with a tongue that has done nothing but lick sweat off of my top lip for the last three hours. Words are the folds of the umbrella that keep me from trying to beat the heat off myself with a claw hammer when the burning skull drags itself straight overhead and then just stares. Words are the offerings of a kind hand under my ribs, telling me it will all be alright, even though I am tired as death with no place between root or thorn growth toss my tent screen. There are some nights that I lie in my tent waiting for the air to cool just enough to let me slip into sleep. Some nights I wait for hours as a trickle of beads carry salt to my back. I should write I think to myself. I know that I can not bear it though. The thought of my hand sticking to paper, pen dragging ink like a dog trying to clean himself on grass, sweat moving fingers over my skin with the feet of ants I always have to hit before they bite. No. This is the time I think of you, and all your words that talk me down from the ledge, and the sweet sick bridge of too much self. It is rare that I can sit with computer keys under my fingers for hours clicking on comments that you send from all your separate worlds. Yet when I can, for a little while there is no staring of my feet at the door. For a time this is all that matters. We are teacher and student both. No, not today. Today I am a walking canvas throwing paint on myself. It is the sound of bone hitting bone this turning around when all that I want to do is visit a New Orleans that is blankets to neck sick in bed. To be strong sometimes is to admit that this road in front of me is beyond me. There will be enough threat and bullet to face reguardless of the road I take, without throwing myself on a knife rusted by saltwater.
Thank You for your kind comments. Tonight I take off my boots seeing some threads have broken that hold leather to leather on my boots, leather to sole. From the inside of my Tilley hat I retrieve a curved needle, thread it, and talk myself calm. Tomorrow I'll cross the Mississippi with all your eyes, and we'll drop round stones in the brown water together from a ferry that hums words I don't know.