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Rural West Texas. Flat. Brown. Isolation. Lost dreams. Ragged old motels. Dirty convenience stores with the lingering scent of unruly humans. Fast-food restaurants with a glaze of stickiness one cannot wipe away. A restroom door that will not lock. Someone has to stand guard. High school football stadiums are the apex of architecture here. Looking out a sun-splashed window. Have to squint. That brightness of life in no-man’s land. But then, there are men here, and women, and children, and refugees, and wayward wanderers. Like dust in the wind. To have the existence of dust every day. To wake up in a silent room with the cracking sun creeping through the curtains. An alarm clock suddenly starts to beep. Slam the button. Groan. Throw legs over side of bed. Peel the curtains away. It already looks hot out there. The world is colored brown and bleached yellow. A few trees are green. The moon forgot to make its exit. A man bemoans his entrance.

He awakens hungry. Decides on frozen waffles with specks of artificial blueberries. He pushes the toaster bar down. Red lines of electric heat. The glow is like hell. There’s a pop that startles him. He scrapes butter across the waffles, pours the syrup on. Damn it, they’re already cold.

Outside and the war helicopters are marching overhead. The killing sound of those blades slicing at the air. Nowhere is safe anymore. Except out here in this devilish grin perhaps. Where hell really exists, and the homes stand still like the warmth of spring guts. That inside feeling, in the soul, man. The pain of these savage feelings when one’s life just isn’t quite right. The fear comes up when he starts the car and begins to drive away. Work is death. Work is a waste of his human essence. What if he just went on driving, needle the downtown capture and just keep going. Rural West Texas is all around and armed with the measles gun. What a calm dream it would be not to worry about surviving anymore. Think about that long breath one could take. But no. Work is a cage. Work is a torture. Work derails true dreams. Unless you’re one of the lucky ones who love what they do.

Living room windows flow by. A thick tree in a yard. Crumbling play sets, old tire swings. A lopsided shed or barn. Distant ghost voices. An old man is inside the house sitting on a couch mumbling to himself in the dim light. He’s wondering why it is that he took care of everyone he could while they made their way through life and now he was left alone to fend for himself. Forgotten. There is a cloister of ungrateful, selfish people in everyone’s world.

There’s an abandoned train station on the outskirts of a broken-down town. Tumbleweeds plastered to the stonework, the work of wind and obstruction. A long crow flies against the warm blue of the sky. His cowboy boots grind against the buckled pavement of an old parking lot. Weeds coming up through the cracks. His thumb rolls against a spark wheel, a lighter ignites, flame to tip of deadly cigarette. Inhale. Exhale. Looks around. The wind is whispering long lost tales of historical dead space. He thinks of roses and the tender petals. He reaches down and plucks a bright yellow dandelion. He rubs the flower against the back of his hand. It’s supposed to mean something but now he doesn’t remember what it is. Maybe some sort of magic to brew in the rural West Texas of dreams and nightmares.

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Special thanks to Edge of Humanity Magazine for publishing three of my poems recently: Coffee Shop Rain, The Translucent Wander Pain, and Space Curtain. Please go check them out! Also, a reminder that my new e-book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. The print edition will be available soon. Thanks for reading and supporting independent creators.