23 Comments

Sitting here in Thee Sonoran and devouring every word you put to paper, i thank you profusely for the flavors of life,emotion, heartbreak,joy, wonder,light and dark here,please never stop, we ALL need this!

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Glad to see someone enjoying this from the Sonoran Desert. That desert made me who I am. I was a Slab City resident for several consecutive winters around 2014. I miss that desert practically every day of my life.

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You’re making me long for the road again, Andy.

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Oh WOW!!! Utterly stunning. Gorgeous. Heartbreaking beyond words. I had a brother once, like the wayward kind. Your wayward brother here helped me relate to many byways, alleyways, broken dreamlands of America. Because I haven’t seen them like you have. I am in awe and wonder of your astonishing writing, intrepid soul, your fierce love for this country. Incredible. Incredible. A poem for every single one of us! “All come to look for America!” Thank you a million times over!!!

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Mar 5Liked by A.M. Hickman

Read this twice. Gonna ponder over what I read and may go back to read it a third time.

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.. exactly .. 🦎🏴‍☠️

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Mar 6Liked by A.M. Hickman

You are right that it is hard to pin down the meaning of words.

Many people would see what you write about as calling for the return of poverty to all americans.

They do not feel the spirit of freedom which beckons us onward to something we can never sum up in words.

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Mar 6Liked by A.M. Hickman

It's no easy task to put this crazy jumbled up glorious mess of a country into words. We are blessed. We have followed a dangerous path. Live in light of eternity and it sort of begins to make sense.

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Superb! You’ve put the feelings I have about America in stunning verse! Although I’ve come to the point you referred to and have lived with the gauchos of the south and wandered the northern deserts of Mexico, you make me rethink my motherland. I’m not quite to the point of returning, but this poem does soften my heart a bit. ✌️

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I think you’ve captured that raw back alley of the US quite well.

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Thank you!

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Mar 10Liked by A.M. Hickman

I whole heartedly agree brother., a glorious love letter to America . Your words make me wish I was born male and much much more courageous so I too could travel that way.

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Mar 6Liked by A.M. Hickman

Excellent. Capturing contradictions of a complex, confounding country.

America is all that, and a bag of chips isn’t it?

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Fantastic piece.

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.. about the best damn writing seen in a coon’s age eh ..

need a delicious 2nd read.. to really get in the saddle myself 🦎🏴‍☠️🇨🇦

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Well done, and thanks for this beautifully written meditation, and for letting the heart speak fearlessly of what it knows and has found. This essay, about the worst country in the world (except for all the other ones), will probably upset or confuse some, but it rings true as a love letter, travel memoir, intervention, and historical poem that challenges and enriches our understanding of ourselves. Truly, embers of life still smolder beneath the heavy ashes overlaying America’s calcified structures. May they be kindled once more into life-giving freedom, courage, toughness, and grace.

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....."to take America by the shoulders and shake her a bit and say, 'is this really who you are'".......I've felt that way too often recently....beautifully done!

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I can't get over how you try to straddle the worlds of a wandering Beat poet from the 1950s and some kind of modern internet religious-conservative trad. They are quite incompatible you know! I suspect the former is closer to your heart.

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Ha, maybe, maybe not. It is difficult to be on the road so long and not find Christ. It is conversely difficult to hang at the after-Mass coffee hour and not feel a little out of place, being a hobo and all. What'd Whitman say? Something about "containing multitudes"... At this point, I am content never to see them completely resolved.

Thanks for reading, God bless!

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You've got it right. I've always stood by this wild bipolar intoxicating nature of America. Its why I love and am fascinated by her.

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