On the other side of this dust
Wearing mask
Bones broken
Coca-Cola bottles
Sinclair gasoline is spilled
In between highway 29 road kill
Creating reborn clouds of fat
Hunger appears in the middle of greasy sto bot moon pie
Looking like Prince Albert Tobacco
Unlike his favorite molasses pie
Being munched on as a remembrance of
January's run up that Muddy hill
fifteen miles North of shuck town.
On the eve of humidity's blink
The same "sweet-sweat"
upon Etheridge Knight's eyelid
Waved farewell to his daddy leaning on that fence post,
Drunk
Liquor spilled
Dust raised high
From the bottom of Etheridge's hole-born shoe
"To the end of my journey"
They sang as he walked past the church house door
wide open, Waiting for Jesus to come in.
The Chicago Avenues, the New York blues
And San Francisco agony
Could never fill his belly
With enough vomiting hatred
To erase the anger
In that pounding melody
Of red dust purified
Running through his veins
At 2:00 am in the morning, EST
As he wrote that lonely love poem about memories
And mankind,
sent it to his illiterate daddy.
The postman drove off in that beat up Ford truck
kicking up reddish dust
Still leaning on the fence post sippin on a coke
contemplating the where-about of his son,
his daddy who couldn't read