"Cream Ale Conversation"

 

 

c. 2026 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(8-26)

 

Black boots kick the pavement

Leather soles slide forward as wheels turn and bite

That spectacle causes me to grin at sunset

Ready for an evening ride

The light of day grows pale and thin

While I confess being sidelined for too long a time

With the cares of an aging rebel in effect

Weighing heavily on body and mind

As a younger man I would have lodged a protest

Over sitting silently as the continuum commenced

But now, with my bones aching from fits of fatigue

I’m left to wait it out by a chain-link fence

Humble and hobbled on my spot

Not given to accepting this plot twist

I want to drop my machine into gear

And turn the throttle with my wrist

Jerry Kay and his wife named Beanie

Had their farm on a dirt road outside of town

I used to drink whiskey and eat frog legs, fried

While listening to his travel tales go ‘round

Ruby rode a scrambler put together from junkyard bits

He seemed to think it was a superior steed

Gary remembered Vietnam, and coming home empty

All of those characters were born of a different breed

I never got choosy about what to imbibe as a kid

Red wine, or tequila, any concoction had me taking a pledge

I did my best not to appear naïve and feckless

Among those wild warriors who danced on the edge

Alan with his Volks Van, a loaf of bread on rubber hoops

With a four-speed stick at the hilt

We ran that bus out to the main route

Forty air-cooled horses at full-tilt

Seeing concerts by bands who we idolized

Heroes all, living as we wanted to be

But I never quite got to that level

Stocking shelves at the local P & C

Diamond Dave, with his Datsun wagon creaking along

A taxi driver, from whom we all bummed a lift

He must have been cold-blooded, like a reptilian rover

That role of friendship never caused him to quit

Those benefactors were my reason to experiment

Bette and Sandy, and a dozen more in the aftermath

They steered me away from the rock cliffs of peril

Gave me the impetus to pursue my craft

I had a typewriter, bought for a tenner

And carried that relic around as if it were a prize

Keys jamming, and a cloth ribbon, full of holes

On that platform, I dared to improvise

I could not guess where my adventure would lead

A fledgling fool, who intended to write

I tapped out tomes until my fingers went numb

And my second-hand desk had a garnish of ink white

Mohawk hair and black-leather skin

Zippers and razor blades, hung to offend

Sometimes I got followed by the gendarmes

But I always found a way to make amends

Sleeping under a bridge abutment

The concrete dust causing me to cough

Drunk and disorderly when I had a crew to hang with

Then out of money, and generally pissed off

That was the lifestyle of a wanderer walker

I never had my own transportation of any kind

At the wheel, I was a dangerous apprentice

Too careless and eager to leave my identity behind

That gamble brought a payday that I did not expect

My cards read like an obituary, coined at a bus stop

Though anyone who watched must have known right away

That I was about to fall fatefully from the mountaintop

A low-budget film became my biographer’s tool

A spinning reel of celluloid, in black-and-white, reserved

That saga on the silver screen, depicted my downfall

And a VHS tape kept it well-preserved

If I take that magnetic brick out of the cabinet

Those recollections still part the veil

And I find myself knees-down on the floor

With a lingering taste of good fortune, and Genessee Cream Ale