i love the word "vagabond"

His voice was once a slick trumpet,
shining in an outdoor band.
His throat has since been scratched out
by malevolent mice, this killer sickness
that crawls through his cab, hides behind his wheel,
stares with him at his digital clock until three am.

All of his old Nigerian air song, gone to the mice.
Just blues now, just Georgian heat
on the killing room floor.

It is dark and raining, though his clock says
eleven fifteen in the dazzling afternoon.
It says that. It lies like that. All spelled out in clear, red digital dots.
Like the constellations in city lights at night,
the line drawings of the mythical heroes of America:

Wave-riding cowboys, wet vagabonds, with bullets to spare.

This is not a land to be won or lost, he thinks,
no, it is only a song, to be dampened,
to become moldy, to thin out like an old flannel nightgown,
to scratch last hollers to the moon.