Skip James

Sunday, September 25, 2005

It’s just me and Moe.
Everyone else is still recovering in their bunks as our bus chugs along through Montana. Moe and I are the only ones awake, or at least I hope he is since he’s driving the bus.
Now this trip feels official. Driving through those desolate landscapes with no path to your past, without any vague trace of familiarity, civilization, phone bills, prostitutes, or a reason to believe that should I wander off my trail I would return home alive.
Last night, the evening closed its eyes upon our mobile home leaving a drunken and restless Fargo, as the crowd spilled out from the bar and into the streets. That morning I awoke in my wife’s arms and in my own bed, under a surreal blanket of granted wishes. I said goodbye to my wife again and we sailed out of the Minneapolis skyline, I imagine that my goodbye’s sound exhausted. How many times can I say it with a straight face? Why am I always leaving my one true love and spending my right now, which is all any of us have, with a paycheck and a clouded dream of shadowy faces looking up at me for an answer?

Bird in a Park

If you were a bird in the park, I’d feed you in the spring
And in the summer I’d wake early just to hear you sing
I’d be lonesome when you’d leave me in the bitter autumn wind
But when winter fled, I’d be in the park, where you’d return again