Episode: The Friend who Cried

“A harmless man at an intersection said, under his breath: ‘Christ!’ “ ~ John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs

It was the moment
Of his nineteenth nervous breakdown
The few people at the bus stop
Tried their best to avoid his gaze
And his obvious pain
As he spread his arms to the glory
He fell to his knees
Begging Jesus please
Relieve this pain in my brain!
Only the old lady
With the croquet bag in her arms
When she stepped onto the bus
He was drawn to look at her
Noticed he was not the only
One  crying

Bless her Siddharta
Ease her pained empathy
Even though god could
Kill her extremely fast
He stood there
On his prodigal knees
Alligator tears streaming into vast malar
Rivers escaping the anti-christial
Demons flushing the desert
To wash the child and his mother
From the sands of Texas 
To that Gulf of Mexico

He was believing that these tears
Were a convergence
Of spirituality
Though really it was a convergence
Of vast planetary objects
He now sought to do the very best
That he could do—he could
So he preached silently
On the buses he rode to and back
From work
This seemed okay for a time
Until he ran into the only person 
That would admit even tangentially 
That he was being heard as more
Than mere sublimation, thus
Affecting most anyone,
Though not everyone
Brainwashing the masses
He in short was just another eyesore
Or a**hole---he was at the back of the bus
In proximity
The young lady getting off the bus in Kirkland
Who told him vis à vis
That she worshipped trees
Atypically appropriate
He divining to be the martyr 
Culled her a tree-f*****
Or s*** a root!
Silently screaming
At the very top of his noesis
And directly to his own
Bloody juncture
Of his kinesis

He would not have exhibited such prodigality
Had he not picked up a hobo, though
obviously he showed psychosymptomatic signs,
Who was hitch-hiking on a back road
To go to a party in Bowling Green
He turned out to be a good friend down the line
So with visions of Woody Guthrie
Dancing in head
He started hitching himself
The outstretched thumb
The orbular finger
The digit that says hey how are you
And up yours at the same time
So he busted the chops of his boots
And hiked around those back roads
Of his home
Well the young man who was
The more permanently ensconced
In the realm of hobo-dom,
Was to Short-sleeve Steve
Who had read Woody Guthrie’s 
Bound for Glory
14 times,
So to meet a guy who hitchhiked
And drove his camper truck
All over the world
Was really an exciting time for Steve
What was cool, they both played guitar and harmonica
A little banjo and mandolin and Jay
The hitchhiker also played some violin 
Well, Jay, the hitchhiker, had a small
A-frame on his mother and father’s land
Up around Jetson, Ky. (see if you can find that place on a map)
Where the latest pack of schemers were situated
Those guys—the guys who were 
The guys that tried to rob the Porkvile Bank
They had snuck in the back way
Then fled in cars and motorcycles
These guys had obviously never read
The Sunday funnies
They did not know to disable the cameras
With black ink in a squirt-gun
Or at least a piece of duct tape, Ala Dick Tracey
These cameras, which took photos of such clarity
That the bag man was soon robbed of his pelf
Although he made it to Phoenix, Arizona
Before the FBI caught up with the guy
At some dive bar and grill
Of underground infamy
The FBI burst down
he door of that backroom den of thieves
Where he was having a thoroughly
Time of sinful pleasure
With the Eskimo girl
With herpes on her respective lips
Last heard from he was doing 11 to 15 years
On the Rock Island Line
Splitting limestone donated
By the national trust
And a loco gravel quarry
Who picked up the pieces
For a slight labor fee
That allowed the rockpile
Assigned inmates to purchase
Small hygienic items
And buy the prerequisite cigarettes

When the leader (bag man)
Finally served out his time
He was denied probation three times
He was diagnosed with throat cancer
Despite his being built up
To a size 18 neckline
From swinging that 16 pound sledgehammer

Steve knew he was the only one
Who could successfully rob that bank,
Yet he would never think of doing it.
His hitchhiking buddy and he
gradually made their way to Seattle
where the story falls into the paranoid dilemma
he presented to himself.
If only he could see that he was a fool
maybe he could have been more involved
with the music biz side he wished
to be a part. If only these da****
breakdowns would stop slowing him down.
If there were a cure....
yet he wished to be pure from drugs
of any sort including prescribed ones
Too many drugs, too many poisons
to filter the blood of these raging chemists
The beer he drank---moldered his brain
he laid in bed all night strumming
his guitar---playing the blues---
would wake up after somehow lulling
himself to sleep---still playing the blues
migraine headaches---wonderbar
wherewithal JC and the sheep
He felt like the OZ: like a bad bad boy
and da**** he wanted to enjoy!
What was it Jimi Hendrix sang,
Manic Depression's a frustrated mess.

Authors Note: This is probably this most enigmatic of the poems here collected, it is partially auto-biographical partly character combinations, etc.

All works by N. Scott Reynolds in the published works of Coffee Break Inspirations are Copyrighted, with All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish has been granted to CrumpledPapers.com. Nothing can be reprinted in any form without express permission from author. Feel free to send request or comments about this poetry to the author N. Scott Reynolds