5-15-22 Remembering Old Times and Old Friends

days and nights on the frontier (I)
​
we flew no flag
because we were a secret,
known only to readers of the front page
of the New York Times which knew,
even 45 years ago, all the
secrets fit to
print…

but also, of course, the radicals and revolutionaries downtown knew,
and the tribes who sent men to clean our rooms and shine our shoes
and, no doubt, watch us carefully, preparing for the day, but best,
there were the caravans who knew,
lines of camels loaded with goods on their back,
going clankity clankity with every lumbering, soft-footed step...

the caravans that stopped every couple of months
on the narrow road that separated our secret living quarters
and our super-secret operations center where we sat and listened
to the also not-so-secret secrets of the other guys...

the camels put to pasture beside our walls where the merchants in their robes
laid out their wares for us to consider as we passed for shift change,
from the gates of our home to the gates of our work and back,
all kinds of goods, oil paintings , brass shining bright under the desert sun,
camel saddles of polished wood and soft leather and always at least one tailor
who it was said could, for next to nothing, look at a picture of a man’s suit from Esquire
and make an exact copy with the finest silk from China, a silk suit, finely tailored,
in finest Savile Row fashion for $20…

many bought such suits and some bought many suits before going home,
getting word back to us who remained that, while the silk was fine,
the cotton thread that sewed them was not, that the way to keep your $20
suit when you got home was to take it to someone who could take the suit apart
and put it back together again with good thread…

there was a lot about the place that was like the suits, both less and more
than it often seemed -

secrets that weren’t secret, finely tailored suits made with rotten thread,
soldiers who would rather see us gone protecting us
from people who would rather see us dead,
fake wars and, ultimately,
fake peace...

days and nights on the frontier...

pressed like rain
​
the moon
a blood edged scimitar
pushing a cloudburst west
rolling dark and dense

the Gulf’s gift
to the desert, blooming
in all the shades of cactus
transcendent

it would be a time to be there

I’m not
but would like to be

running with the clouds
across the desert
and into the mountains

pressed
like the rain
by the blood-edged moon

days and nights on the frontier (II)

working a midnight shift
on Moscow time meant
that 4 a.m. breakfast at the 24/7 NCO club
was a pitcher of beer
and a cheeseburger with fries
and the jukebox
blasting…

multiple listenings to the Doors
with “Baby Light My Fire” …

feeling
worn and raunchy
having seen nothing female
for more than six months but
the Commander’s 16-year-old daughter
sunning at the pool, her leaving at the end
of the Commander’s tour in whatever virginal state
she arrived, a sterling testament to good military order and discipline…

as Mother’s Day approaches

I think about a poem for my mother,
passed on now for more than
twenty years

and it’s always hard, so much easier
writing about my father, so large and dominant,
he, the sun, she the moon
and thus, it might seem
a lesser light…

but consider the moon,
always circling, always there
but sometimes seen and sometimes not,
shifting phases and faces
through the course of a month
but never changing…

a constant
sometimes invisible in its constancy,
a reflector,
not a creator of light, easy sometimes
misjudge its place and its
power…

but,
consider the tides…

how I became a pacifist
 
not much of a fighter
when I was young,
most of the fights I had
I lost,
like the first,
when I beat my
larger opponent’s
fist
with my
face
mercilessly…

luckily
for the fractious
barroom drunks
I occasionally crossed
in my drinking
days,
I grew older
and I grew smarter
and, most important, I grew
considerably larger,
developing
along the way a
menacing
visage,
discovering, along the way
that large and mean-looking
allowed me a hardcase bluff that discouraged
even the most hopelessly
drunk
from testing
their unsteady valor
against me,
avoiding thereby further damage
to innocent fists
throughout the terminal
of my Saturday night
adventures

learning,
as was true in most of the rest of my life,
that faking it
usually works about as well
being it

days and nights on the frontier (III)
​
the operations center ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
with staff working rotating shifts, swing, mid,
and days, three days each shift with a day off between each

and because of that twenty-four operation,
everything else operated twenty-four hours as well,
the NCO/Enlisted and Officer Clubs, the two tennis courts,
the two lane bowling alley and the base theater, the base
theater with a steady stream of Disney and other family
entertainment (even though there were no families, except
for a short time, the Commander and his daughter) and
most everyone on the base who wasn’t working or sleeping
was drunk or on the way
to getting
drunk…

and the curious thing is (at least I think it’s curious
now even though it didn’t strike me at the time) there
was no obvious law enforcement - outside the walls
were semi-permanent camps of host country soldiers
who provided the external security but were never,
ever allowed inside the gates and inside the gates I do not
recall over eleven months ever seeing any military
police except for those couple who guarded the gate
to the operations center, reviewing badges to confirm
we were who we were supposed to be at the place
where we were supposed to be…

nowhere inside the walled living area of the small base
do I recall seeing a military policeman and nowhere, even
the officers guarding the operations gate, did I see anyone
armed…

this, in a community of about 1,500, half to two-thirds awake
at any one time with nowhere to go and nothing to but sit by the pool
or at the appropriate club or by the walls or atop the barracks
where stars shone bright in a display of light every
desert night, nothing to do among this small collection
of places but
drink...

drink and
remember other, more welcoming, places
and count the days remaining
at this place, hoping
the beer will last
until then
and
then
be left behind…

an old, out-out-of-season piece

tamaleria
​
it is Christmas Eve
and in accordance with tradition
we will spend it making tamales with
a crew of related corn husk spreaders

my son will be in charge,
because in a large family of Mexican women,
inheritors of generations of mamas and tias
and abuelitas, all expert in the art, my half-Mexican son
is the only one who knows how to do the job
of mixing the masa and cooking the savory carne
(and a few frijoles refritas, “las especiales” )

he has agreed to do handle the technical end of
preparing ingredients and the actual cooking, but only
if there are significant volunteers to do the grunt labor
of actually spreading the masa and carne and wrapping
the filled corn husks…

I expect it will be great Christmas Eve fun for about
the first hour…

(I don’t even like tamales so much, but the time
of gringo domination in South Texas
is past, especially in the vicinity
of mi casa…)

mistaking a thing’s name for its thingness
 
the Zen master speaks
of names
and the naming of things
and how the naming of things
is a function of the world
and not the thing

how by naming
we seek to catalog differences
between things that are all the same,
coming from the same place
when their existence begins, going
to the same place when it ends…

a tree might be a tree, he says,
but it is also a cat and a rock and
a droplet of water and even a lion named
Cecil, a name beyond a name, but still
a tree and a rock and a cat and a droplet
of water, and the sun is the moon
and the moon is the star and the star
is you and you are me
and we are with all the rest
all things that be, that have been, that will
be, and all our naming does not change
the essence of all things which is
the same as all things of all things…

be proud...

for your are not that tiny, disposable thing
your parents named you, you are more, bigger,
part of all as you are part of your parents
and their parents and the ox that pulled
their wagon through the rock-strewn
steppes of Patagonia…

be proud...

for you are much more than the blinded world
has named you…

days and nights on the frontier (IV)
 
from out barracks roof
we can see over the walls and past
the Pakistani soldiers who from their small camp
guard us, and past them the fields and the shepherds
and their sheep, and sometimes the shepherds
take their sheep elsewhere as a man with a long-barreled, 
antique rifle shoots at another man with a long rifle
in an adjacent field who shoots back, both missing, tribal
disputes requiring not death or serious injury, but just the effort
and the show, like dogs barking on opposite sides of a fence,
a noisy piece, but effective at the time... 
 
(but not so much anymore it seems,
the dogs of war having jumped the fence
and men who are not shepherds with new and more accurate
guns and women and children with bombs strapped to their chest)
 
but this is then,
then it was just the guards, singing quietly in the morning, and the fields
and shepherds and sheep and make-believe wars for honor satisfied,
and beyond them, the desert, shimmering on hot afternoons,
and beyond them, the mountains, the Hindu Kush,
hard mountains, dry, brown and treeless, just deep canyons
and sharp crags cresting on a deep sky,
a Martian landscape, hard mountains for hard people...
 
we could see it all from our roof, watching with a six pack of beer
as the soldiers who watched over us lay out their carpets
to pray...
 
they do not pray for us, except, perhaps
for us to be
gone

settling for semi-naked ladies
 
I approach the new day’s poem
as I approach the new
day, hesitant
and a little unsure as to how
it’s going to go…

a busy day ahead, things to do,
a trip to Austin, nothing interesting enough
to force into a poem…

and while I sit here
dumbfounded
by my “failure to communicate”
(what a great movie)
creative self to sitting-in-my-chair-drinking-coffee
self

(and yes I know “dumbfounded” is a peculiar word
for use in this context, but I like it and it is my weakness
to use words I particularly like even if they don’t
quite
or at all
fit
and I’m used to it and I expect you to be too
by this time)

affirmation!

(yes, self-affirmation,
even when inappropriate essential
to maintaining the hubris of putting words on paper
and expecting them to be read by other than close
friends and relatives who will tell you they read it even
it they didn’t)

(let’s face it - hubris, I mainline that stuff like a junkie on horse
or a fat man eating pecan pie - I have no other excuse)

meantime,
communication between the ego and its alter
still mostly static and buzz (is it not obvious), I am
bombarded by images and moments and distractions, traffic
on Broadway, a fire truck, Chopin bumping keys overhead, two skinny
blond women having a meeting, too much time at the gym taking them past desirable
to hungry and ferocious and sharp-toothed predatory (middle-age, trying, always,
to keep that debutant look without the wide-eyed innocence I never believed
anyway, but still probably nice people so I hate to criticize…) and, I swear to God,
sea gulls that turn out to be ring tones on one of the women’s cell phone
but it’s already too late, I’m back at the beach dodging jelly fish
and nearly naked ladies…

and I’m tired of this hail Mary fake and dodge
anyway
so
what the hell, I
quit

````````````````

content to hang out
instead
with the semi-naked
ladies
sand in my shorts
be damned

days and nights on the frontier (V)
​
a Filipino rock and roll band
on the USO circuit
around Europe,
all dressed up in cowboy hats
and fringed shirts with shiny snaps,
playing rockabilly hits
from the 50s,
covers of the best from Sun Studios,
Johnny Cash, Elvis, Jerry Lee
and all the rest

playing Christmas Eve
at the NCO Club in Darmstadt
down the road about 70 or so klicks
from Frankfurt,
and I had a date with the cousin of a friend,
a pretty girl with dark hair and dark eyes
and a bright, sunny smile, and
we danced and danced
bopping around the dance floor,
her skirt swirling and
swirling
and it was a great Christmas Eve
a long way from home…

the guys in Vietnam
had Hope
and Ann-Margaret
and the current Playboy Playmate of the Year...

in Germany we had
a Filipino rockabilly cover band,
but nobody complained…

----------

a year and a half later
I saw them again,
the same Filipino cowboys,
same hats,
same fringe shirts with shiny snaps,
playing the same rockabilly
hits
in the bar
atop the Spirizan Hotel
in Kabul…

everyone liked them,
even the Russians, big guys with stony stares
who didn't express appreciation for much of anything
but their vodka,
and I liked them too, the cowboys, not the Russians, drinking
my own Russian vodka, tapping my feet to the music,
no dance floor and no pretty girl
to swing around it like
I remembered from Christmas Eve
in Germany

and I couldn’t but feel a little sorry
for the guys, trying to play rock and roll
guitar licks to an international crowd of far from home
drunks in Afghanistan,
having, it must have been, the worst agent
in all of the Philippines…

snippet
 
a snippet
a drippit
a little tiny
tidbit
readit
&
forgetit
it’s
just my morning
today
bit

Sad news, my poet-friend, Gary Blankenship, died a couple of days ago. My friend, beloved by everyone in the on-line poetry community who ever wrote or read with him, had a similar background to my own, a retired professional who turned to poetry for a purpose when work no longer provided one. I was one of those who wrote and read with Gary, almost from the time I began to write. His work, much quieter and gentler than my own more rough and ready work, was a good contrast to me. I have a couple of his books, including his first one. Wang Wei's River Poems, which introduced me to a particular Chinese master and to the old Chinese masters in general.

Unfortunately, my library is in disarray and I can't find Gary's book to choose from. Instead I'll post from this on-line selection from the book.


​Wang Wei, generally considered one of the three major Chinese (High Tang) poets, wrote a series of twenty poems collectively known as the Wang River Collection. They meant to record a journey up the river with his good friend, Pei Di, while also being about Wang’s mansion located in the river valley.
paragraph 2 
A group of poets from Toronto known as ‘Pain Not Bread’ published a book in 2000 titled Introduction to the Introduction to Wang Wei. The poems are modern free verse interpretations of Tang poetry by Wang, Tu Fu and others. Among the works is ‘Mountain Range,’ a beautiful adaptation of Wang Wei’s ‘Deer Park.’
3
Based on their work and others, I’ve set out to ‘transform’ Wang Wei’s poems into mostly verse libre sonnets, a free form sonnet. The order is not Wang Wei’s. I selected the order on the basis of how much I liked the poems and how difficult I thought the transformation would be.
4
III: After Wang Wei’s Luan House Rapids (13) — Beyond the Estuary

A torrent drowns duckweed and bulrush;
squalls whip cattails and willow thickets.
Canvas wet outside and in, soaked shoes
squirt with each muddy step.

A trickle, rivulet, rush flows over field
and road, into cellars and badger holes.
Boats break from their moorings, trash bins
float like empty shells past broken dolls and bikes.

On a cloudless night, we embrace the stars;
we pour diamonds through our fingers.
On a cold autumn night, jewels turn to dross;

promises dull, lumps of cinder without warmth.
A summer’s debris drifts to block the drain,
a white feather trapped between stones.

5
The literal translation by Wai-Lim Yip, “Rill of the House of the Luans”, is

6
blast-blast — autumn rain/s middle
lightly-lightly/shallow-shallow — rock flow pour
jump wave/s-bead/s self mutual/each other splash
white egret startle again down

7
Like the best of Oriental poets, Wang Wei leaves the poem unfinished; the meaning of the final line a mystery to be worked out by the reader.

8
My version is:

Autumn rain and wind gusts
strike the boulders below.
The rapids’ waves collide --
startled egrets rise, settle.


Although Gary had been less active than in the past, he leaves behind a wealth of excellent work.