I first got the idea for “fellow traveler” when I started listening to Woody Guthrie. Being from where I’m from, but never really falling into the “popular” stereotypes about the South, really felt alienating to me. Deep down, I knew there’s gotta be more to Southerners than being backwards, gun-loving hillbillies, so why did it seem like these ideas were never refuted? Well, it turned out there are, I just wasn’t looking in the right places.

Finding Woody Guthrie led me to finding Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger led me to learn about the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Coal Wars. Learning about the Battle of Blair Mountain opened my world to the idea of unions, worker protections, and workers’ rights. Growing up in Small Town, North Carolina, the word “union” was dirty. A word so nasty it was to be spat on, usually followed by a quip about how if unions ran things, you’d be paying $100 for something that should only be $2. I watched “Harlan County, USA.” What I saw was people who looked and spoke like me, who could be my kin, taking up arms and fighting for what was rightfully theirs. If this was being a big, scary socialist, I wanted everything to do with it. See, I come from a long line of these rednecks; my side just never heard the call to stand up for themselves. I learned about Mother Jones, started listening to Utah Phillips, Phil Ochs, and John Prine. I started to get answers to some of the questions I had been having.

Then, one day, I heard the news about Aaron Bushnell, a man who self-immolated to bring light to the US-Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine. In a way, it reminded me of Joan of Arc and putting your body upon the wheel of the machine to stop the oppressor at the sake of your own body. I saw the video of Hind Rajab. I learned about the Nakba. There hasn’t been a day since that I haven’t woken up angry. I learned about Bobby Sands and his comrades in Long Kesh. I learned about Brendan Hughes and all of the brave children of Ireland who gave their lives for yet another just cause.

Now, I don’t know what one radicalized country bumpkin’s love letter to the works of Guthrie, Ochs, and Prine have to do with all of that, but I do know that there is nothing new under the sun and if we don’t stand up in our own way each day to fight back against both the left and the right and the wolves in sheep’s clothing, we’re no better than the oppressors.

a little on the idea

fellow traveler

this land of mine

I will not go,

Cross the invisible divisions

That stretch from the rivers to the seas.

This land is mine.

It was mine from the time I was born

And was never asked for a dime.

A mirror set against picket lines and strife,

The water swept valleys and their mules,

The long church charity box lines.

I will not go.

The man atop the hill has never spoken for me,

And I have never listened.

I will not go,

He will not make me go.

Who does this land belong to,

Except for me and you?

9:00

I found as I listened to the birds

Chirp at each other over yonder in the minor key,

That all of my woes could be

Solved with a simple answer.

Still, the fine mood that wouldn’t

Leave my bones was terrible.

I watched the dawn fade to true morning.

What tragedy awaited me today?

Perhaps life starts at 9:00 in the morning

When the caffeine begins to set in.

Right as I go to work for pennies,

Breaking my back for a man

That cared neither whether I lived or died.

And still I felt fine.

How incredibly strange.

dead guthrie's society

Now, I ain’t seen the rain in over thirty-one days.

We’ve been letting the sun-shine in so long,

Almost forgot what it feels like when my brain starts to decay.

Who’s gonna tell the sun that she could ever be wrong?

There’s trash bags in the trees,

And oh boy, they’re lookin’ at me

From way over there where the owls sleep.

The leaves are starting to turn, and it’s enough to give me the creeps.

Right now, I’ve got a headache mixed in with an aching heart.

It’s getting harder to see this time around,

Like someone mixed my medicine, and now I can’t get to work.

I think right now I’d like a hurricane,

I’d like to watch it come through like a big freight-liner,

But not like that one girl who made me so afraid.

Maybe I’ve been staring at the sun for too long,

But I ain’t seen the rain in over thirty-one days.

They say to be a writer, at least you gotta write,

But I don’t feel like doing much of anything except for playing with my cat.

He’s sharpening his claws on my leg out of spite,

But I can’t blame him for that,

Since the government shut down and stole the clothes right off my back.

Yeah, there’s nothing for a fat cat now,

And there’s nothing like betrayal

Like the kind where you gain nothing from it,

And there’s trash staring at me from the trees.

But right now, I’ve got a headache mixed in with an aching heart.

It’s getting harder to see this time around,

Like someone mixed my medicine, and now I can’t get back to work.

retail worker rag

Well, I sang every tune in the Big Red Songbook,

Learned all about the Battle of Blair Mountain and what it took,

Now, they’ve sold the Reds out for $32 by my accounting

And the whole land’s owned by a crook.

I listened to everything Woody had to say about Depression,

And Phil Ochs might be my poor grandfather.

I took heed and listened to every lesson,

But all I found was that I was more of a bother.

I guess I’m just a retail worker,

That hasn’t ever been a coal miner

But there’s something growing in my lungs that I can’t see

Every time I gotta check the back for something that ain’t for me.

I’ll hoist that union flag just as high as I can,

But there’s a shipment here, and I’ve gone and thrown out my back.

From that big office up in Boston,

I’ll bet those profits look pretty good.

From your desk out in Austin,

I’ll bet you think we want more than we should.

From your middle class, I bet you’ve forgotten,

Just how small the fall is

Until you’re someone like me again,

At the mercy of a monopoly man.

I haven’t been a soldier,

I never got to meet Sam Stone,

But hell, even I suppose

That Jesus died for nothing,

It never lightened my load.

Maybe I’ll be the new son of God,

You’ll find me working in a factory outside of Galilee,

Because it’s gonna take getting to Heaven

To join that one big union in the sky.

mea culpa

In the beginning,

I walked for forty days and forty nights

In deserts laid bare by asphalt

Accompanied by crucifixes made of caution signs.

In the beginning,

I saw the creation of the light,

A light that found no man or woman at fault,

But soon there came a conflagration that was by design.

There was gold to be found underground

So they sent the first poor man on his way.

There was never a famine-no lack of potatoes,

Only hatred, true apocryphal greed.

In time, came an Exodus, quite a bloody Exodus,

Now there are children born with no mouths that must scream.

There is a multitude of squalor out where no bargain abounds.

The first man sat close-mouthed with food on his tray

Until, like his brothers, who all developed halos

Forgot what it was like to bleed.

Someone, somewhere, forgot there were more of us,

Though some are not what they seem.

My girl, my girl, what have you done?

You broke my heart today.

Maybe twenty-seven isn’t an adolescent,

But you can still feel fire the same way.

Blind men can still finish what’s been begun

If only there were more to keep up the fray.

Have you been thinking about starving for it?

Are you willing to die for it?

Have you thought of rubbing gasoline and tar on it?

Are you thinking of the innocence, or do the bodies get in the way?

How wonderful it would be

To be surrounded by the light

And put those poor schoolgirls out of mind.

As for me,

I hope I don’t die crucified in South Carolina,

For I’ll fight ‘til I’m laid in the grave.

brand new hillbilly elegy

I spent some time dancing on the Devil’s tongue,

And he told me you’ll be in Hell some day.

It took me back home to when I was young

And my papa’s fields were covered with the horses' hay.

I recall hearing “Are you washed in the blood?” the first time it was sung

In that old country church so far away.

There’s a trailer park on the corner,

There’s a copperhead in the grass,

There’s my mama asking for money for dinner,

There’s the forgotten sister with the monkey on her back.

There’s me being first at college.

Damn, it hurts to lose your accent,

But it’s okay ‘cause I got a friend from up in Jersey

That likes me ‘cause I’m one of the good ones.

Now, they call me a hillbilly,

Though I come from flat land.

I suppose our beaches really can’t be beat,

Maybe they are the best in the land.

I suppose I’d sell out too,

If I thought for a price, there was more to gain,

But you were never really poor, were you?

Come on, it’s all just a game.

Your little book came out of the blue,

Made all of us down here look like we had brains that were maimed,

But tell me, did the couch give her consent to you?

I might have almost lost my accent,

But at least to my home, I’ll always be true.

My mama never tried to sell me for narcotics,

Now we’re getting into a real white trash “who’s who.”

I’ve never been a stranger to the food banks

While you slipped into the House on the Hill

To put more tanks out on the West Bank.

Buddy, that blood’s on you.

Maybe you think our brains are rotted and rank,

Thought you could sneak in for a kill

The way you did to the Pope with your marriage on the ropes,

But I’ve got a tempest toss’d South to rebuild.