Through A Vagabond's Eyes

“THROUGH A VAGABOND’S EYES”

BY SHEB SCHEBELLLA

There are few sacred places left for me anymore they once were everywhere, but that was before I was 5 and Santa Claus was still alive. I got my first job when I was nine as a ranch hand wrangling Bovine. It was one of the proudest moments of my life never feeling more freedom or more alive. There were wild coyotes, angry bulls and Rattles Snakes along the path that I would travel and poetry in my head that would unravel.
MY Quarter Horse was named Gipsy and she was my best friend, and after our summer together she new everything about me, but we would never meet again. That fall a Mountain Lion had crept into her stall and that then was the beginning of the end; for I had tasted loss, and smelt the unpleasantness of death.
At nine years old I was served up a cliff notes on life, on how to conquer fear, hatred and strife. However the cliff notes never discussed loss or loneliness, I would have to wing that one at a very high cost, but as the years past by and I kept dusting off my Levis as I knew I would survive.
The years stacked up and life and death flanked me on either side. The people in my life that I would meet would seem to pass in and out of my life just as quickly as strangers on the street. I could never really tell if it was them or me riding that revolving door, all I really knew is that when the sun went down it was me standing and watching that ship leave the shore and so then one day I said “No more.”
I decided that if I was to stay sane I would have to except this as part of the game. People wanted a piece of my heart; they wanted to look inside my mind. Soon I found myself to be their emotional 911, their 3am call, the guy that patched them up, patted them on the ass and handed them back the ball. I would never worry about seeing them again for they would find me after they fall, I still seem to be the kid shoveling shit out of life’s stall.
People always wanted a part of me, but they never wanted me all. I am damaged goods, my body lined with scars, my wiring is poor, sometimes I look at a door knob and forget what it is for, my eyes can only see as far as my heart, but I never felt that I have been misunderstood and I do believe most people know my intentions are good.
The only thing I have never lacked is courage even though most times I have thundered through life I have been scared, but always with the understanding nothing has to be fair, there is no reward in this life for being a good man, for me its idea enough to just be a helping hand, to remove sadness and put a smile in its place, it leaves me with a comforting notion that my life has not been a waste..
Throw a dart at a map and 9 time out of ten I have been there and ten out of ten times I have ventured on alone, I seem to lack something for the ones I fall in love with and there has been very few, but they would never truly discuss an idea of home so, there it is, this is why I roam.