The Bread We Eat in Dreams

and sometimes we didn’t and that’s just how it lies.

Full-time cowboy employment is a lot like being a poet.

It’s a lot of time spent on your lonesome in the dark

and most folks don’t rightly know

what it is you do

but they’re sure as shot they could manage it

just about as well as you.

Some number of sweethearts come standard with the gig,

though never too much dough.

They dig the clothes, but they can’t shoot for shit,

and they damn sure don’t want to hear your poems.

That’s all right.

I got a heart like a half bottle

of no-label whiskey.

Nothing to brag on,

but enough for you, and all your friends, too.

I quit the life

for the East Coast and a novel I never could finish.

A book’s like a cattle drive—you pound back and forth over the same

ugly patch of country until you can taste your life seeping out

like tin leeching into the beans

but it’s never really over.

Drunk Bob said:

kid, you were the worst ride I had

since Pluto said Bob, we oughta get ourselves a girl.

And Witty whispers: six, baby, count them up and just like that

we’re in the other poem, which is how we roll

on the glory-humping, dust-gulping, ever-loving range.

Some days you can’t even get a man to spit in your beer

and some you crack open your silver gun