Psalm # 3

Blessed are the Knuckleheads
Blessed are the long- haired, the unruly, the disenfranchised
Blessed are the dropouts, the screwups, the never-do-wells
Blessed are the nervous, living in trailer-park double-wides,
scratching and clawing, not answering the bill collectors call
Blessed are the cowboys on their Saturday nights
Blessed are the rowdy
Blessed are the flawed
Blessed are the pipe fitters, the ironworkers, the wheel alignment specialists, the carpenters and dishwashers and paper-or-plastic
supermarket captives of a time clock
Blessed are the farmers
Blessed are the housepainters
Blessed are the firemen and cops and U.S. Postal workers and the
career enlisted military men, hashmarks down their pressed
sleeves
Blessed are the truck drivers, alone against the night
Blessed are the work-on-commission salesmen, bounced from another office without a sale
Blessed are the security guards
Blessed are the fry-order cooks
Blessed are the commuters, stuck in traffic
Blessed are the third-base coaches, the utility infielders, the
ground crew working in the sun
Blessed are the character actors and the stuntmen and the lighting crew
Blessed are the bass guitar players
Blessed are the unappreciated with rough hands, calluses built
stronger every day, dirt deep under the fingernails, Skat soap
and hot water needed every night
Blessed are the unnoticed with tired feet that are stuffed inside
steel-toed work boots and door-to-door wing tips
Blessed are the uncounted with tired legs that are stuffed inside
denim and uniform cotton
Blessed are the uncomfortable with hungover heads that are stuffed
under hard hats in the morning
Blessed are the untouched with still-beating hearts that are
covered by pocket protectors filled with ball-point pens

Blessed are the hastily married
Blessed are the divorced
Blessed are the stepfathers
Blessed are the stepchildren
Blessed are the stepchildren of the stepchildren

Blessed are the weak, who want to be strong
Blessed are the poor, who want to be rich
Blessed are the inarticulate, who want to speak

Blessed are the frustrated

Blessed are the restless

A window to the imagination stays open
A racetrack on a sunny day
A black car steams from the back, get out of the way, get out
of the way, pushing through the shiny, multicolored obstacles
in front
Get out of the way
A great roar comes from the car, from the crowd, from deep within
Each and every thoracic cavity
Get out of the way
The action comes past in a blur

Blessed are the knuckleheads, most of us, caught wherever we are
caught, doing whatever we are doing, wishing, looking to get
outside our lives and fly
Blessed is Dale
Dale Earnhardt, 1951-2001
He found the way.