Born to be wild

Van Gogh - Weizenfeld mit Raben - Wheatfield with Crows

TRUE CRIME (volume one)

Throwing apples at passing cars

was just one of many enormities, plus

shoplifting for the fun of it, that’s right,

with cash in my pocket, only to be caught

with one foot out the door, “You’re under

arrest,” said the foaming-at-the-mouth grocery clerk

in red apron to an 11 year old boy, climbing through

unscreened windows looking for petty cash,

barbecued potato chips, any amusing fire-arms

that might be gathering dust, jumping from Joe

Rolondone’s rooftop onto his front lawn before

during and after splitting a six of Colt 44 Talls

because we wanted to be stunt-men or cat burglars

on the French Riviera when we grew up, French

kissing an eighth grader when I was like in the 9^th

and feeling kind of shitty about it afterwards, taking

advantage that is of a younger woman whose heart

wasn’t really in it or not as much as her tongue was

in my mouth, although she started it, running naked

across Sun Valley shopping mall and “mooning” anybody

who might actually think my pimpled ass was worth

a look, watching Myra Breedlove

taking a shower through a pair of stolen binoculars, ripping

off lines from T.S. Eliot and using them any way I please,

smoking a joint at lunch time with my future wife

on the rooftop of a San Francisco office building

then making out on company time, and doing

that a lot, lifting a bottle of obviously expensive

Bordeaux from the executive dining room of a

Major Corporation in East Lancing, Michigan, filling in

the gaps of our library with permanently over-due books

from other libraries, not caring what time it was

and not knowing the difference between late, early and punctual,

forging the birth certificates of presidents, taking

an oath of office myself on a Gideon’s Bible swiped from

a Tupelo, Mississippi (birth place of Elvis) motel room in 1983. 

Born to be Wild

Excerpt from the movie 

Music by Steppenwolf