Riding the Suicide

This ain't no Woody Guthrie song.

Steel wheels on steel rails,

120 tons of machine, no romance here.

Catch a suicide—ride between cars

where the coupling could snap your spine

if the train takes a curve too hard.

Thirty-eight hours Indianapolis to Seattle,

pissing off the side when the train slows,

eating cold beans straight from the can.

Railroad bull in Spokane broke my ribs with a flashlight.

Hospital patched me enough to get jailed.

Public defender got me time served.

They call it freedom, this constant motion.

They being people who sleep in beds,

who've never spent December in a Montana gondola

watching their breath freeze on their beard.

America looks different at rail level.

Back sides of towns, industrial waste,

homes with trampolines and swimming pools

glimpsed like another dimension.

Every rider carries scars—

fingers lost to frostbite,

skin grafts from friction burns,

stories worn smooth from retelling.

We're the last cowboys,

last pioneers,

last free men.

Bullshit.

We're running from something

or someone.

We're broken parts

of a broken machine.

Five friends lost to the rails.

Two crushed during coupling.

One froze outside Missoula.

Two disappeared in train yards,

likely murdered for their boots.

This ain't no Woody Guthrie song.

This is rust in your lungs,

grainer dust in your eyes,

death always riding one car behind.

Yet I keep catching out,

keep counting the miles,

keep breathing diesel and freedom

till the wheels or the whiskey

finally take me down.