itinerant

.
"Come on boy go thou across the ground
Go moan for man
Go moan, go groan
Go groan alone
Go roll your bones alone
Go thou and be little beneath my sight
Go thou and be my nudest seed in the pod
Go thou, Go thou die hence
and of this world
report you well and truly"

-kerouac

Its been a while.
Moved, again.
DC to VT via NM

long trip on the train
Southwest Chief with my mom
three days, two uncomfortable nights
no sleeper car

Chicago
Kansas City
St Louis
Lamy NM

Hello...goodbye to my brother
married and gone for at least three years
back to India

off again to VT on the grey ghost
slinking my way across the country
on a bus.
seventy two hour day
somnambulist

its a gray country between here and there

2AM bus stations in Joplin Missouri with holes in the ceiling
and no stars in the sky
five hour waits for broken buses
and bitter cold

Empty Amarillo Streets at 4 in the afternoon, Saturday

Single moms carting screaming kids from Tucamcari to Pittsburgh
feeding them M and M's and coke

enlisted men huffing it back to base
back of the bus like a locker room in high school
trying to convince a girl to take off her top
for twenty bucks

homeless men in south station
stealing your toiletries

endless cup of coffee at the only twenty four hour diner
around the corner from the station
with the waitress who complements you
on your jacket

Seventy two hours of sitting in a aluminum and plexi tube
smelling like a fart
tucking in at all the backdoor and side entrances
to cities in the heartland.

Its all one taste in the end i guess