Post Rainstorm

Siege guns pound over the horizon

Raindrops trickling through my Oak tree

Bullfrogs are singing

Night has pushed one minute into morning

I hear a freight train bound for the Port of Augusta.

-DS Baker

Voices On The Wind

Muted
Now
Fog
Blankets
All
Till
Voices
Upon
The
Wind
Summon
Clear
Skies

-Fin-
DS Baker

Whispering

Red brick walls
Towering Pine trees
Silver mist flowing between
Stillness of dawn
Breaking soft
Whispering breeze
Carrying Winter's
Promise of deep
Silence

 

-Fin-

DS Baker

Get your own life, mine is booked

Go ahead and mock me from a distance
You have no idea the battles I have fought
Over and over time and tide have conspired against me
Love or its leavings are not burning flames, but sustaining embers
May you know why my face is lined in wrinkles
It is not the years my friend but the miles on the chassis
Frequent heart aches keep a heart supple, responsive to new beginnings
But no more should you mock what you don't know about, find your own life
 
-Fin-
 
DS Baker.

"We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of"

In the terminus of time
before a continent groans

shouldering a-wakening Sun
as a mason might a hod...

When a full Moon still
hangs above a slumbering
land...

The ghosts of past lives meet
with living souls

It is the soft hours when sleep hangs
heavy upon the brow

Old and loved ones come to call
in tangled skiens of dark matter

Past, present and future
a moebius strip of causality

We never truly die
We are eternal

Born from matter forged
At a star's heart

We transmutate
and are changed into

Dreams...

-Fin-

DS Baker

STORY-"Food Run"

“Damn it to hell!” Deputy Dan Jefferies of the Inyo County Sheriff’s office muttered to himself. Turning around he looked over to where his partner Sam Baker was examining the damage to the road leading out of Barstow towards Ft. Irwin National Training Center. “Did you hear from the Constabulary Commander yet?”

“Well yes and no…”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Yes and no?”

“He said, and I quote, “M1A1 Abrams tanks do not just drive off the reservation and make a goody run to the Bun Boy in Barstow, California. And are we sure it is tank treads and not a civilian dozer tracks?”-End of quote.”

“Funny, thing that Sam. I followed those tracks back to a section of fence on their reservation. You can see the tank tracks coming from and returning to.”

“I know… we both served in the Army. I talked to the late night managers at the Mad Greek and Bun Boy. They both said the same thing. It sounded like rumbling noise they both could feel in their feet. Then it stopped. They and their workers thought it might have been an earth quake. Bun Boy’s manager stated, “Four of the scruffiest, dirtiest looking soldiers she has ever seen came walking into the restaurant.” In fact she said, they were so covered with dirt, they looked like Raccoons. The only clean spot on them was where it looked like their dust goggles had covered up their eyes.-She also stated that they said, that they had not been re-supplied in a week. They were starving. Nick Scropolous over at the Mad Greek, said pretty much the same thing. Except they ordered everything on the menu and they mentioned something about having to feed an entire platoon.”

Jefferies began rubbing the back of his neck. He turned his head sideways and said, “I think this is going to go down in the annals of goody runs as epic in nature.”

“If it wasn’t for the fact the road is tore up and going to need CALTRANS loving ministrations… I have to admire the American Fighting Man.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean look they were hungry. Out of MREs and apparently in desperate need of rations. Got to hand it to some unknown 20 something soldier, feeding his initiative and his stomach all at the same time. Do you really want to track these guys down and have the MP’s throw em in the stockade, for the sin of starving?”

Several long minutes passed, with both deputies standing next to their cruiser, looking at double rows of chewed up asphalt trying to sum up the events in their minds.

“Naaw! Screw em! Must have been that construction crew that came through here yesterday…!”

“That’s what I am going to put in my report.”

The End

DS Baker

"Bluff Road"

　

Along Bluff Road
I see shadows walking

In ambulatory silence
Each seeking solace in

Darker stretches of lost passion

Party shops with fishing lures
Of drugs and alcohol

Hold those shadows close
To their breast
Like a suckling mother her child

Third shift specters
Walk through industrial
Parks of effort and paid wages

Only to find repose upon
Rainbow jeweled parking lots

Smoking menthol cigarettes
Drinking cheap malt liquor

With cunning of Tonk
Guile of ivory bones

Pissing on cinder block walls

Each with a pocket full of
ATM receipts
Not dreams
Lotto tickets
Not hope

Would Dubois or Carver have
Understood this despair

Would they have known these false faces
Could their anger still hold firm
As bulwarks of hope

Television has robbed
Left nothing feeding nothing

Telling shadows flickering
In blue light caves
Your are the ghost not I

Slavery is dead
But those willing to
Have placed their neck
Back into the yoke

Here in the New South

Churches
Youth groups
Fight those chains of birth
Shackles of economics
But slide backwards

What does heaven’s reward hold
When your dead from the neck up
While profits from crack
Lay at your feet

Intangible grace is often less
Compared to shiny sedans
With tuck tires

Thousand dollar rims
Jacked six feet in the air
New rednecks of America

The shadows watch
Smoking and drinking

Stylized street predators
Minds calculating like an Abacus

Solving Geometry equations of angles

The Devil sends his message
Devotees summoned shuffle in
Full light of day

To his house...

Blake’s Paradise Lost Party Shop

While the east bank
Of the Congaree River
Has woods deep

With sounds of
Shadows Haunting

-Fin-

DS Baker