Searching for Home (Poem Audio)

Truck Stop 1997

By the side of the road
Red neon wills itself
Onto gravel and crabgrass.
Midnight Millers and Gypsies
Catch its ride, blinded
By its beauty.

Sweat is slow here,
Thick and dusty.
Rising, reflecting the moon
And falling on shirt collars.


Late night land of name tags,
Ball caps and
Poker machines.
NASCAR magazines and
Hank Williams Jr.
A State trooper sips coffee
From a white mug with a green
Real estate ad on it.

They are the moment
With the hissing of air brakes and the smell
Of burning diesel,
Lot lights wink off chrome trim,
As eighteen wheels hum on the interstate.

Cheap china calls
Into the morning,
A sleepy cook rings a bell,
Stained place mats and chipped Formica.
A salt shaker that’s always half full sits
Near a red eyed Canadian that stares
At dry eggs
While a bus boy swabs the floor.

Past a sign that reads
“Gents” is where they live.
Into the den of the late night poets.
Their words line the walls,
Supporting a cracked mirror and
A shoe shine machine that’s
Out of Order.

Thank you

Cords of purple veins fed
His fingers through the laces
Of his patent leather shoes.

A horsehair brush whispered
Across the green wool jacket lying
Over a wooden chair,
It’s brass buttons winking
With each turn of the ceiling fan.

A navy blue Legion cap,
Trimmed in gold braid,
Defied gravity,
Leaning to the right,
Resting on oily white curls.
It called to the confidence
Of a youth so many years missing.

Gone now are the lines of angry
Farm boys standing in their boxers,
A doctor smoking a Camel and
Calling out their names.

Gone are frosted mugs of Pabst
And the sounds of Billie Holiday drifting
From the juke box in the corner of the PX.

Gone are the smiles of the red haired pilot,
That always ate black licorice before a mission,
And the barracks mutt named Franky D.

Gone is reciting the Lord’s Prayer out loud
While holding the broken body
Of a boy from Brown County near the Thames,
Calling for a mother he couldn’t see.

Gone is the confetti on an autumn day
As new boots kicked the dust
Of Meridian Street,
While school children and politicians cheered.

The call of robins
And the drone of a Piper Cub
Framed the words of a preacher
As they echoed off granite stones
Adorned with miniature flags.

His emerald eyes counted
The silent stare of his comrades,
Eight in all, they stood, remembering
Those that lay in foreign sands,
The deep jungle swamps,
And the hills of New England.

Speakers from a Civic caused
Them to pause,
And tears slid down his cheeks as ACDC
Echoed through the trees.

No Harvest.wmv

Main Street Treasure Chest

Excited days,
The old days,
Cavernous slabs of cement fly
Under my feet,
Large trucks growling
Within an arm’s reach.
The shade of maples welcome
Here and there,
As I rushed from bright blistering pools
Of summer sun.

Rubber sneaker soles skidding,
A sweat slickened arm resting
On the curbside mailbox,
The corner
Of Pearl and Main is where Carnegie had left
his legacy.

A throat filled with cobwebs,
And a spear in my right side,
My eyes rose to meet
It’s solemn stare.

Beyond the scarred but solid
Doors lie
The stairs that ascend
To another land.

A land of shadows, and the smell of rubber cement.

A land of hisses of silence
From a white haired lady wearing a purple shawl.

A land of sinister sentries
Of oak, keepers of dreams,
Standing to the ceiling,
Their arms holding the rainbow
Colored spines of creatures contained
In dusty covers.

A land where Thomas Paine
And Twain conspire
Around a back corner.

A land where King’s Pennywise
And Thoreau’s Walden wait
For my dirty fingers to pull
Their thoughts to my eyes.

A land where a ninety seven pound
Nobody slips into new skin,
Becoming King Tut,
Painting a fence for Sawyer,
Shooting to the outer limits of Space,
And smelling the smoke of the Napoleons at Gettysburg.

Hidden in the echoes,
Lay my promise,
My hope.
My dreams.

With those thoughts,
I place my right foot forward
Onto the chipped concrete step,
My hand resting on the wrought iron rail,
And my journey begins.

Calling all Libraries, Indy Bookstores, and Places of Education

On June 17, 2010 I will be performing a live reading at the Butler Public Library in Butler, Indiana. I would like to invite all members or associates of libraries, Independent Bookstores, and Schools/Universities to consider scheduling me for a reading.

I need the exposure, and need the audiences. I want my readings to hold educational value and purpose (such as supporting a library or Independent Bookstore).

So if you have an event or opening for a reading and would like to speak with me about it, please e-mail me at scottsprunger@hotmail.com.

I look forward to hearing from you all.

Thank you.

Yesterday's Never Gone

It was past the time when the hour hand’s
Revolutions were painted with tears.
It was past the moment when a single red rose,
Resting on oak, lowered itself to be covered
In Indiana clay.
It was closer to the days,
Those days,
When I sat among scattered papers,
Cigarette butts, and torn photographs.

I could feel loneliness the way I could smell
Spring coming to Madison.
The mist from Big Clifty clinging to a moss
Eaten maple.
Laughter bellowing from the sandstone that
Framed the sleeping brook.
March air kissing red cheeks,
Hearts skipping beats, in love with life.

I stared out the west window for years.
There was the hill we once sat on in the
Shade of an oak.
A blue, wool blanket pressing the crabgrass
Flat while we talked, chuckled, remembered.
Ants formed a conga line to my ham and
Cheese sandwich,
The way tears licked their way to the
Corners of her smile when I bit into it.

The path that runs through the chicken yard,
The path that crosses the Kissing Bridge,
That path that creeps past the rotted Model A
Ford that hobos sometimes sleep in.
The path when I bring her flowers,
The path that leads to the chipped, rusty back
Gate and a sign that reads
Rosewood Cemetery.

It was long after we said “I do” in a white
Washed church with no steeple
To a preacher wearing a black tie.
It was past the time when I sat among the
Cattails holding a lace handkerchief bearing
“J.S.” in one corner,
While slowly turning my gold wedding band
Between scarred fingers.

It was when I fell between the snow peas and
The sweet corn,
My overalls stained in black earth,
Wind burning the lower lids of my eyes,
That I saw her standing near the porch,
Where she’d always been,
Wearing a cotton dress,
Hanging my shirts on the line.

Love Richard

There she stood
Surrounded by wooden wheels screeching
Poodle skirts and saddle shoes.

An angel under a spotlight,
With Tommy Roe crooning
To the couples in the corners.

His scuffed loafers whispered
Across the oiled, ash floor,
Sweaty palms creased his chinos,
His lips covered by paper.

Life or death came with the next
Hurried breath,
When he asked her to dance.
A smile, a flip of her dark hair,
And he was able to exhale.

A dance that began very slow,
Much like a train leaving a village at midnight,
Gathering speed, at times
Calm and smooth,
Often switching in an instant,
Running wild,
Nearly leaving its tracks.

And so went the dance,
It netted a smile, a moonlight walk in the sand,
On to a wedding, a few children and a career.
Loved ones leaving them, and a
Small red chested robin perched on her finger.

A dance that has lasted 53 years.
Close to coming to an end many times, but
Blissfully going on.

Despite the years,
She’s still the angel in the center of the floor,
Slowly turning, looking him in the eye,
And whispering “Yes.”.

Cedar Creek and Salvation

The Second Freedom: Worship

Cedar Creek and Salvation

1923.
Hot, damp canvas
And a campfire.
Rocky soil underfoot from an Indiana creek bed.
The hell-fire glare of a Baptist
Revival Preacher wearing a black coat
Despite the Midwestern heat of September.

Perched on a striped cloth
Folding chair,
Dark eyes sizing me up,
He demands my faults lie
Open on the ground for all to see.
His worn boots kick at them
As I cry to the sky that I had led
A good life.

His hooked nose and
Scarred index finger
Single out the past pretense
Of my statement.
Reminding me that I still breathe,
And that I had lived for today not tomorrow.

Angrily, he throws his straw
Hat over his shoulder,
Onto a path to the woods.
A path to righteousness,
A path to life,
And says quietly, Go, and sin no more”.

Copyright Scott Sprunger 2010

No Harvest

An Ohio Blue Tip is flicked to life in a field of uncut wheat.
Cupped by a bulging hand covered in ashen hair,
it’s raised to meet a Lucky and a deep breath.
Smoke lingers,
then dives into the wrinkles brought on by sixty-seven summers.
Eyes of sapphire stare out across the field,
fixed on a clump of maples near the west road.

Those eyes.
America’s eyes.
His eyes.

His eyes have felt the sting of sweat
and the cutting edge of the harrow’s reins
as two nags led him across the earth.
His eyes have worried through framed glass,
darkness,
hail dancing on the tin roof.
His eyes wept under a September sun
as his son’s blood drained into the grass
from beneath an overturned John Deere.
His eyes laughed when Old Roy sprouted
quills from the end of his snout.
His eyes questioned the skies
when they brought no rain and the dirt rose like a ghost and flew away.
His eyes turned bitter when fields of towering corn were crushed
beneath the pavement of a new shopping mall.
His eyes choked for breath when a pink slip from the auditor
shoved them into the red.
His eyes trembled as a man in a gray suit
beat an auction sign into the yard using his worn shovel.
His eyes dimmed as friends and strangers roamed his farm looking for treasures.

His eyes died
as he cast away the Lucky
into a field of uncut wheat,
turned and crept back to his home
within the city limits.

copyright 2010 Scott Sprunger