Hitchhiking to Tx--poem by guest writer

Stranger Within the Gates

by Neal Dachstadter

The treeline follows the highway,
The beeline pauses in Texas.
Sinatra he croons about “My Way,”
And Kerouac, he’s sorta feckless.

Unwilling to quiet his rant,
Indwelling no hut, nor a shant,
H Thompson, he built him a fort,
Far south - Caribbean "Rich Port.”

Surrounded by engines and wheels,
And men who turn great business deals,
It’s sooner or later the thinker
(yon Bon Vivant five o’ clock drinker)

Who's bound to conclude, then hold sway,
‘Mid Motion-Perpetual's ray,
“Industrial Doctrine must prove
A free man, at times, he will move.”

A guy may withdraw from his home,
To turn toward the dark and the gloam,
To prove his ideas, like a candle,
Ignite more than darkness can handle.

He trades Interchangeable Parts
Comparing the horses, the carts,
With horsepower chariots fast,
On roads facing forward, not past.

Lo, best be the desert-scape tanned.
Ho, West, see my gold-colored land!
Fast-trade: “I'll take gold for the green."
Fast-fade: “Forsake old, now unseen.”


We live on a Continent’s River;
Miss Delta’s rich generous giver,
Usurping two great northern waters,
Whose tribute-flow renders them daughters.

Miss keeps them well placed and employed,
Her children are graced, overjoyed,
Whenever her name is south-sung,
("Miss’ssippi") they sense the shui-feng.

Her sons they climb westward for land,
No East Coast, but Western’s their strand,
Their Motion Perpetual, till rest:
Till Parts Interchange for the best.

The past week brought nigh Theta Zeta,
Sinatra? H-Thompson? Frere-Jacques?
Akin…but just Brother Filart,
Whose train goes to Berkeley, like BART.

In Austin, this brother’s abed,
His journey, it passed without dread.
Miss greeted our Biblical Stranger.
She pointed him west, without danger.

Where Were You in '62?

Les Politiciens
"Where were you, in ’62?”
The school alumni deftly ask.
Reunion: time to pour a brew,
And pop a cork, or drain a cask.

"Allow the troubled world to cease.
We'll dress so fine.  We'll have a feast.
Our temps en vie when all was new:
Our sky was blue, in ’62."

La Legion
Your skies were blue, the desert brown.
Your stocks went up, a flag came down.
Diplomas, fine diplomacy
Left rendered lost une Algerie.

The night bright red, the port rouge noir
When to the forts men bade bon soir,
While Charles de Gaulle returned a call
To Jean Paul Sarte, who played his part.

Fey, southward under burning skies
Les anciens  ended final ties
And glared a motto toward the sand,
"The Legion is our Fatherland."

They gazed upon the desert towns
Which they (defending, long extending
France's reach to southern beach)
Called once their own. Tous parfait?  Non,

But not so sad as what has bad-
ly long ensued, for 50 crude-
ly squalored years, replete with fears,
And squandered tears, and grinding gears

And broken glass, and beaten lass
(lo now becloaked beneath her yoke).
Bonne Algerie, a sundered mass
Might trade that freedom. Think me joke?

Were men less free, when colonies
Bespeckled lands and southern sea?
Were women slaves? Had fled the Jew?
En Algerie, en ’62?

Sonne questions  hover in our day.
Bonne Algerie, so lovely?  Nay,
No longer beau sans  France’s flag,
Lo, stronger?  No, askance, does lag.

L’Algerie
"Forsake your pall, O Charles de Gaulle.
Sarte (not Camus) wake your ass to
My cry beneath a darkling sky,
'Bon Hommes we knew, till ’62.

One hundred and a third, they stayed,
Until the gentry-merde you played
That with no statecraft, honor flayed,
Slayed:  low, beneath my dust now laid,

Where men made walls and towers built
(now blasted, fades a tarnished gilt),
By foe, etrangere  blood was spilt.
Though Legion bayonets, to hilt,

Were also dug. These proud remain
Unlike your smug legerdemain.
Pardonez-vous while we explain:
Bons Hommes were few, in ‘62.

I heard those, too, chant in the gloam,
On golden sand and crusty loam,
And on the strand, by ocean foam:
‘The Legion is our land, and home.’”