The Good Old Gal

Written while listening to a Howlin Wolf Channel...

I was watching a guy on You Tube

he was a big old country guy

working on a 1947 Studebaker

parked in a field for seventy years

She hadn't run since '75 but he

was determined to bring her back

and after tweleve hours or so he did

and she purred like a good ol' gal

I've got a couple of good ol' gals

who still purr when I'm around

one lives in New Mexico

the other lives in Los Angeles

I love them dearly

tho our love is platonic

but hey that's better than

no love at all

They are still running strong

and older than that '47 Studebaker

even tho both the Studie and

one of my good ol' gals are

held together with “baling wire”

I still like the way they're put together

come to think of it I like the way

all my good ol' gals present themselves

to me it's a miracle that anyone

could care about a rag-tag old man

who continues to hold onto the dream

of being a poet once more.

RD Armstrong

The Arizona Strip

I blew into town on a Western wind

It was a gentle breeze in Blythe

But it picked up speed as I crossed

Into Arizona

It dogged me like a hungry coyote

Trailing me waiting for me to get careless

But I wasn't falling for it

I looked like a rube but I knew my

Way around and I'm smarter than I look

Something About Crickets

After the world got suddenly old and Manhattan pulled this gray blanket tightly to it’s neck, the air filled with an odd sound:

A Warbling of sorts as if a fleet of tiny alarms had gone off simultaneously.

Don’t these crickets know that It’s not yet nightfall?

Why can’t they just get up and dust themselves off and fly home to their Families?

(When a firefighter is immobilized for a certain length of time, an alarm that is sewn into their coat is activated. This alarm sounds like a high pitched warbling. On September 11, 2001 the air around the WTC collapse was filled for a time with this sound as hundreds of firefighters were buried under debris…)

RD Armstrong

Long Beach, CA