Someone Has to Say It
Someone has to say it,
It might as well be me.
I’m a dharma bum,
A Bohemian born too late’
Much more suited to a life
Among the back streets of
Montmartre or Montparnasse,
Lost among the poets and artists
In Bohemian Paris in the early
1900’s or cruising Highway 66
Wild eyed across America
Behind the wheel of a hotrod
’32 Ford in the 1960’s
With nothing but white lines,
A kaleidoscopic blur of color
Flying by; and my head full of
Crazy mixed up dreams.
Free to do what I damn well please,
With no sense of time or place.
Laying screeching, burning rubber
On the black asphalt arteries
Of my unbridled America,
Sleeping under the stars
Alongside whitewater rivers
Edged by giant Douglas Fir trees,
Cloistered by cliffs and mountains
Reaching up to the Milky Way;
Spending days on the Beaches at
Big Sur and the nights around
Endless sparking campfires wherever
I might decide to rest.
At night bathing in warm firelight,
Sanctified by starry nights as
All free men should be.
Born under no sign, a drifter in
Both body and mind, an irreducible
Rascal that is much more than free,
Disregarding form and convention,
Taking some sense of delight in being
Slightly askew of center and in no way
In need of respectability or homage
From anyone,
Seeking and hoping that the fire
Burning in my gut never ceases to
Burn brightly and if and when it does
That I pass swiftly like a fire breathing comet
Rocketing across the heavens,
With one great last burst of life’s light;
Gone.
Gary Orphey about Gary Orphey. I am unpublished and as for a bio, there is little to say. An ex Air Force, circa early 1960’s, a laborer, another niche found much later in life in the arts. Artist,(Abstract and traditional) Illustrator, Designer, Now a poet/ latent songwriter, ‘The Texas Dog Poet’ as I like to call myself. I read the beat poets early on. When I was fourteen (1956) I read ‘On the Road’, and ‘Howl’ and I was never the same. Poetry chased me down and so here I am. Here is what I have to say regarding me.: “I am a runaway under the Southern Cross, a stranger in a group of strangers, a dreamer of great, relentless dreams that seem to take over my head like the stars take over the sky at night. I traveled this country not for the call of the towns and the cities that lie on their pathways. Nor the rivers that wind along side them, or even of the mountains that birthed the rivers. I am restless because I know life is out there somewhere and I have to live it.” I sometimes write under the name of Jocko James (Hence the email moniker) as well as my own.