Crusty Days in Holy Cross

To preface : About past days of freedom being homeless and young in Santa Cruz, California. Thank you.
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An overwhelming sense of freedom overtook me.
As we ran carelessly through dirty sidewalks
Barefoot.
The city our playground, everything in it ours for the taking.

I can tell you about Freedom.
The pavement our friend.
Money obsolete
It meant nothing.

Food was abundant, and friendship endless.
We sat and sang and made merry music.
Filthy.
Sweet herbs contrasting rancidity of days with no bathing;
Our odors filled the night air

Our skins tingled with humidity-
Salts and sands mixing with locks of hair
Grains of sand crushed between teeth.

Life was being lived.
“Yuppies” we’d giggle
Casting glances at the people walking by
The ones who stared
Wondering how we could stand to be this dirty, loud, and free.
Secretly wishing that they too could have
our Freedom.
To be free.

When night fell
The true mysticisms began.
Ocean water hitting cliffs made sounds of deep magic.
We danced upon white sands.
With nothing but a bottle and some busted guitar.
Old tunes of love and hate.
Old tunes our fathers sang.

We fell in love
Some fell in Madness.
Perhaps there is no difference between the two?

When the fire of our eyes began to fade,
our bodies fell beneath old trees.
Nature tended to us
Bodies shivering through the early morning
Until the sun of the afternoon shed its rays
upon our frozen corpses.
Bringing us back to life.
So we could live all over again.