I remember little of my childhood.
Or perhaps I remember too much, but all of it in fragments.
Marabá Paulista would wake up before God lit the sun.
First came the smell of packed lunches being prepared—mingling scents
that slipped uninvited through the cracks in the houses' weathered wood.
Then, the diesel fumes and the red dust.
Old trucks, like monsters, rumbled through the streets,
swallowing up the adults and vanishing down the dirt road.
During the day, the town belonged to the children and the elderly.
We thought that was freedom.
At dusk, the trucks returned,
spitting out bodies that were barely alive;
my parents would arrive—worn out, stooped, and weary.
As a boy, I didn't yet know
how to put a name to it.
Today I know:
the trucks didn't just carry workers.
They carried away pieces of childhood.
They’re roaring by with lights aglow
Akin space rockets, to and fro
Unfailing captains on steroids
Between this Earth and asteroids
This is the blood that moves the trade
This is America, conveyed
Truck-ships, with missions on the mind
Despite the night defy the grind
Rigs leave no waves in their wake
Them running fast and never brake
Men often follow their path
So to avoid the radar wrath
They land for brief prescribed rests
While speeding on the cryptic quests
We’re whizzing by, in cars and vans
And eye the sleeping caravans
United States, the land of trucks
Can’t pass them by sometimes, shucks
Resilient movers. And my crux?
Wouldn’t be the same without trucks
Sept 17, 2023
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Other girls were saying “princess, ballerina, secretary, nurse, and teacher.”
I said, “I want to be a race car who owns a fire truck.”
None of the laughing ones knew I meant it.
None of the other girls knew why I was the way I was.
They knew I was strange though,
Avoiding me at all costs.
The boys, on the other hand, thought it made sense.
They took me under their wings and let me play.
I was happier with them anyway,
As they never said “he said that you said that
we said that she said that he said.”
All was well.
Playing with trucks and soldiers
In the sand is preferable to
Playing with small dead
Plastic children
Anyway.
It sits out in your driveway
a glittering metallic sculpture.
It costs more than your house,
you love it more than your spouse.
You can hardly drive it, it’s too high,
you can barely park it, it’s so wide.
Like an exotic compulsion, you need it,
though you can barely afford to feed it.
There’s a cockpit with winking tech,
offering a printer, wi-fi and refrigeration.
It can pull a house off its foundation.
Is there a tendentious ecological statement,
in this prestigious resource you need for work
is the fact that it’s tax deductible just a perk?
With this polished and pampered machine,
you get the rewards of effective parenting,
as it literally reflects the care that it’s given.
It’s a spaceship ready for expedition,
what else in creation is as elysian,
as your gigantic pickup truck.
.
.
songs for this:
Dreamin’ by G. Love and Special Sauce
Driving by Everything but the Girl
Little Deuce Coupe by Andrew Gold
Chirpy birds disturb my deep sleep.
Sky pastels reflect in a somber ashen tinge.
Sun seems to be lost in a floating mist,
cloaking wet slates and chimney smoke.
As lamp lights reflect upon puddles,
poured into uneven pavement slabs,
it seems like an abundance of angels,
wept like irritated insomniacs overnight.
In the backdrop of contemplation,
a trash truck thunders and plunders,
with boisterous waste collectors,
wheeling bins into its hungry mouth.
Sky paints in an apocalypse aura.
Mind is intrigued - pondering,
if only it wasn't just palpable garbage,
that was taken away and forgotten.
Outside my office window, is a field with a canal running through it,
Today people have turned up with diggers and dumper trucks and are digging the field up bit by little bit.
Oftern barges slowly and gently go with the flow and casually moor there,
But now with all that equipment just to go ashore they have to really beware.
Don't know why they are doing this, no one is really sure,
It's probably to build new houses, everyone knows we need more housing stock,
But you jst can't help feeling they are taking the countryside apart rock by rock.
Hissing cars
Swishing trucks
Rumbling bikes
Life is a highway
Really?
Combusting cylinders
Pumping pistons
Turning crankshaft
Spinning flywheel
Engaging transmission
Motoring drive
Tranferring power
Rolling tires
Hissing
Swishing
Rumbling
Crash and burn
Life goes on
In the end
it was too slow, afflicted
by either age or illness
or simply distracted,
flew head first
into the eye of a headlight.
Flung contorted, neck bent
back, snapped of life,
it died
clumped on a verge.
Rewound to its first flight,
its brief existence traced
untold scribblings
across time and the space
stretched between
these tall trees.
No record remains.
A full stop is placed
here on this muddy shoulder,
the end to something
which, only a moment ago,
flickered through the circuits
of a living brain.
It leaves nothing
but a small hole
and progeny
ignorant of history.
Whatever flowering form
that bloomed here
grew in the blind reaches
beyond knowing, no more
than a short awakening
programmed by its kind,
an expendable part fed
into the machinery
through which all life churns.
Chance had my way
intersect this point
and dab thought upon thought
to stem the bleed.
No balm soothes
the wounds
of this crumpled mess.
Cement trucks rumble by
moved by the need
to fill an empty space,
as these words try to do.
My bike
holds me a spot
Watermelon posters on each spike
In the month of August whilst’s scorching hot
Friends join me and we set up our man-made tent
We’ll be giving free watermelon slices all day!
Carnival rides, seed spitting contests, money well spent
Proceedings will go to the church of 'We Shall Pray'
My food truck is ready to keep ice and a juicer
Watermelon, a thirst-quenching chilled delight
Plenty of good eats from many a food vendor
Join us for a sumptuous day and night
Everyone welcome, just look for
Watermelon posters on
each spike of
My bike
Working with trainer Pauhura Muruh
He developed the "Stirru Pomb"
and the "Thrips Massa" and
"Bassa Moto's Booby trap"
He'll make chicken wing , bending
Both knees with his shinlach.
A waistlach; roll into pinning
Position.A "Tashiaz Bow"
Rendition of a surfboard.
Massiro Missurira the
Brazilian Judo champion.
4 # ground pork
1/4 cup of green bell peppers
4 T minced garlic
1/3 c chopped onion
1/4 c shredded cucumber
3 tablespoons cayenne pepper
4 tablespoons of cultured buttermilk
1/4 cup of breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons of sesame seed oil
1/3 cup of sundried tomato
Salt or soy sauce
2 tablespoons of fennal seeds
Fry up one check seasoning.
MAke burgers and enjoy.
He made these burgers when the promoters
Gave me 40 days to slimdown. I ate them
With habashii thousand island sauce
On toasted kosher rolls. He will pay
In every match for betrayal!
Goin To Town
David J Walker
Hey Farm boy
How’d ya get to town
On tractors and trucks
And 50 bucks
And a flask of my
Daddy’s Crown
It’s Saturday night
There might be a fight
And we ain’t
hanging around
This damned old farm
We don’t see no harm
In getting out and goin down
To drag the street where
Farm boys compete
For the Fastest pickup around
Me and the Boys
Are out to make noise
With some girls we
Met downtown
It’s Saturday night and
It wouldn’t be right
If we didn’t make it
To town
Truck One
Red
With its job soon to be done
Sleep soon ahead
Truck Two
Blue
Many shortcuts its gone through
Yet still overdue
Truck Three
Big
By the Mediterranean sea
It drives with a jig
The flashing lights alerted us
That something was awry,
With rescue trucks preventing
Any traffic getting by.
Adjacent to the river, there were
Police upon the scene
And rubberneckers focusing
On something not routine.
My curiosity aroused,
But blocked by all the crews,
I googled the location but
There wasn’t any news.
The light turned green; we drove on through
And never found out why.
It must’ve been somebody’s,
But was not my day to die.
The deal with trucks (should you not own a truck)
that lollipop horsepowered cylinders -
is really how remarkably well they suck
the rubber tread where the interstate scissors
its cousin, Dixie, born Mississippi,
born as a man and staunch straight-ticket-down
yee-haw! Republican, a down-low-bi-
sexual, wearing Grand Wizard wedding gowns
in pappy’s cabin built on rolling logs,
who each day climbs the thick-cylinder pole
that proudly displays confederate cogs
to the eighteenth turn called a glory hole
where all the king’s horses and all the kings men
absolve all the crackers their cracker-crumbed sin.
12/23/2018
U-Haul Trucks aren't allowed in Heaven,
there just isn't any room for your stuff,
grandma's China and Raggedy Ann dolls,
cross-stitched samplers and mason jars,
and dozens pictures of movie stars.
U-Haul Trucks Aren't Allowed in Heaven,
the matched set of livingroom furniture
with a wide-screened television in living color,
all the clothes which hang in your closet
should be donated to a non-profit deposit.
U-Haul Trucks Aren't Allowed in Heaven,
those tools which you collected within
your three-car garage from yard sales,
and one-of-a-kind antique whatnot
will be sold at an estate sale on the spot.
U-Haul Trucks Aren't Allowed in Heaven,
think of it as traveling lightly one way,
no burdens, no worries and gas to pay,
leaving behind years of collection
as family members make objection.
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