Old before his time. Gray hair. Seated on his thrown, scarred shins from bike brake pedals slamming and carving new wounds in the flesh. Knees knocked from falling from great heights, plummeting as though shot from the sky by hunters of the doomed with his tattered magic rug unfurled beneath him. Sneakers with lacquer and paint and sawdust and every kind of fluid used to cover wood and metal. The goat shepherd walks with a limp and has a belly full of scorpion bowls and shellfish but he's a triumph of engineering, a jeep restored from a war that is never content without bombs blowing up nearby, forever rolling on three flat tires looking for a fight in the worst way, looking up "Trouble" in the phone book and crank calling him at two in the morning. He shows up like a thunderstorm when you forgot to close your windows and attracts lightning, like Miles Davis juggling blue notes in the hazy St. Louis Night.
He's a canary trapped in a coal mine and we're burning feathers for to find his weakness, jabbing at his broken knees. We'll miss him when we're gone.
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