carnival barker
the tin man dances
to an accordion
So last night I’m down at the train station, and I get to talking with a hobo, poured him some of my forty, and he starts on, “Ran away from home,” he says, “with nothing but a pocketful of marbles. Started riding rails when I was fourteen. Seen the backside of a bull in Bismarck, and the upside of a fist in Franklin County. A blind beggar in Baltimore gave me a wooden nickel and told me about a gig in Topeka. What the hell do I have to lose, so after getting out of jail I made my way, but they’s long gone by then...”
passing train
the sensation
of movement
“A few years later a girl in Santa Fe made a wish on a dandelion, and we rode one of them seeds all the way to the courthouse, but we didn’t have ’nough greenback to make it official. After losing this here finger, we hitchhiked to the coast, riding most of the way with a semi driver who’d lost half his mind in the war. ‘We’re all just hungry ghosts,’ he shouted from the cab as he was pulling away, but somehow he’d snuck a $50 bill into my shirt pocket. That kept the wind at our back for a few days...”
drifting smoke
the old blues man’s
gravelly voice
began writing haiku and haibun in 2023, and has work published (or forthcoming) in Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, hedgerow, Kingfisher Journal, Presence Haiku Journal, seashores, The Heron’s Nest, tsuri-dōrō, and Wales Haiku Journal.
