Great Freaks Poem by James Murdock

I have known some of the mad wild humans.
Though they will always be, I have known
the last great freaks of my time.
those who crossed deserts, never quenched.
Who have in Denver and Frisco and Oregon
been like southern stars unto soulless masses.
Who have laid their heads in hip hobo camps
only to rise and break free alone into mountains.
Those who in Yosemite were valley occupiers
or like swallows roosting in sides of cliffs.
Who howl like coyotes at half yellow moons
and drink the spirit from each other's smiles.
I have known those who turn dim readings
from rumblings to rituals with buckets of
cabernet running from them. Who love
the living ferns and see the soul in tree
mushrooms and stone, and of water.
I have loved those who hopped the great
Pacific trains of the cactus-shade desert
to ride Death Valley's rim and get busted hard in
Nevada, burning then thousand dollar fines to
light up the souls of Guthrie and Gram Parsons.
I have known sweet goddess blonde soul sisters
with matted hair, growing like tiger lilies
from the creviced walls of Vedauwoo.
Instantiated they have for me the
future failures of tyrannies.
Look they do upside down toward Linville Gorge
and the rolling glass balds of North Carolina.
My people are all 40 foot waterfalls.
Their homes are in the bark of trees.
Like ash borers they eat the pulp dust of life.
Pranky, their slyness is at home in all places.
Their burning vans blaze cross trail ridge roads.
And I would rather make their trails my home.
My brother was lost in the west so he walked
from Amicalola to Katahdin.
My people do not sit to gather fat.
Rolling they are now across the curved planet.
Their eyeballs spark at the frost of morning maples.
Their hearts are on the speaking shores
of Big Sur and Sapelo.
Their golden bodies are hard as rocks.
Yet they flow like water into one another.
They are those who genuflect to the sun
in gas station parking lots while church-
goers shuffle anxiously thru doors at the
weirdness of the dawdling yoga ones.
Let them take your daughters, let them
teach your sons to be wild strong men—not
the soft sad creatures of suburbia,
not indentured slaves to lawnmowers.
Know I do those who love hot in hot springs
and laugh about themselves flowing
into earth.
In Colorado, the sun sets on a good-hearted
woman lying next to a best-friend's best
friend. They are not shameful but
like swaying housecats, having
jester ethics,
their eyes are sharp toward the moment
that moves them.
Wild they are free.
I have known those pioneers of the soul
who are not stuck in flashy cages,
who praise the infinite elements
of space and earth
and tomorrow rise from darkness
like sun gods after freedom.