HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
 let us consider blood and water water is the blood that lets our blood flow, the blood of all life the blood of the forest and of the meadow and of pastures and bluebonnets, and daisies and the blood-red rose, the blood that eases drought, that allows farmers to plant and sow, that allows the cow and pig and lamb to grow to fill our stomach, the blood that we rise at midnight to lubricate our dry mouth, the blood that washes away desert dust at a noon oasis, panacea for both our hunger and our thirst… water is the blood that flows between rivals in dry times, blood is the disputed creek or river, the range war, neighbor on neighbor, water is the blood that flows as aquifers are drained for some at the expense of others… water is the blood of wars coming, the blood for which we will fight, the blood to be shed in the fighting, yours for mine, mine for yours… water is the blood of all our future desires…  a Memorial Day poem of a sort, more a memoir expressed in short lines as if disguised as a poem. Whatever it is, it is a long one. Marching behind the heroes (a Memorial Day rememberance) the circumstances that led to my military experience began At the University of New Mexico In the Fall of 1964… Completing five months Of Peace Corps training, then, Not select for overseas assignment, I returned to South Texas To drive a taxicab for several Months (from which several great Stories came) then a move To Southeast Texas to work For a small-town newspaper, Managing circulation, plus occasional Stints as a news writer and photographer and, Very rarely, help in the press room… losing my draft deferment after leaving Peace Corps training, I enrolled In a junior college in a town A few miles from the city where I worked, then neglected to attend Any classes, which, becoming known To my draft board in South Texas, Led to my receiving a draft notice Two weeks before Christmas, 1965… Not wishing to spend two years Of my life pounding ground in the army, I quickly enlisted in the Air Force, Choosing four years over two In the hope, at the relatively late age of 21, of doing something more interesting for the time spent… Spending the requisite time in basic training, where a tall, thin South Carolina drill sergeant, named me, as the oldest by several years of the other grunts, as "Big'un" Then selected to serve In the Air Force Security Service As a Linguist, spending most Of my next year of service at Indiana University studying Russian, Followed by several months At Goodfellow Air Force Base In San Angelo where we were introduced To the radio equipment we would use To eavesdrop on the Russian Air Force I next was sent to Darmstadt, West Germany (there being at that time, still, both an East and A West Germany) where I spent a year in a Unit that included Russian, German, Czech, Polish and Hungarian linguists assigned To monitor the air forces of all the Warsaw Pac Countries… It was a mostly routine job, there being Little non-routine activity to monitor, Until the day before I left to return To the States for leave pending Reassignment to West Pakistan… That day began with a great rushing Of activity throughout the Pac area, Troops and aircraft units rushing from Place to place, converging, late in the Night as my flight home passed over The Atlantic, in Czechoslovakia, the Czech government overthrown, its Leaders in exile and Warsaw Pac troops Occupying the cities’ streets and countryside The beginning of the invasion Discounted the day before as annual routine Exercises, the fact of the invasion not known To me until I deplaned at Charleston Air Force Base The next day… My next assignment was In Peshawar, West Pakistan... The original purpose of the post was to monitor Russian response to the U-2 flights over their country, This job ended when the Russians, almost by accident, Shot down one of the high-flying U-2s, taking the pilot Gary Powers, prisoner… After that debacle, our mission was directed At Russian missile and space rocket launches, Including monitoring Cosmonaut communications From space, though no such thing happened On my watch, there were many stories Of Russian loses kept secret, rockets exploding on launch And upon returning from space With cosmonauts inside, at least one Cosmonaut marooned in space, left To die in orbit… But mostly I monitored crop dusters Over the vast region that has become, Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Several independent republics Time passes and nothing is ever the same, For better and for worse and sometimes There is even a little fun, as when I monitored the Soviet Defense Minister Flying through the Kabul air gate On his way to Paris with his mistress… During that assignment I was able To fly to Kabul for a week of leave… What I saw in that week was a country On the cusp of leaving the 12th century Behind for the creation of a more modern State, particularly children I saw passing Our quarters, walking together, singing, On their way to school, a vision that Haunts me as I consider what has happened There since, the war lords, the bloody Russian Invasion, The equally bloody Taliban, the deep Sadness of possibilities lost… I left Pakistan, in 1969, the end of my military Career, as the government changed and we Were ejected from the country... Although I have suspicions… Our presence there was top secret to begin with, So, how do you tell when a secret is no more, How does one get thrown out from a place That supposedly was never there… ``````` And that was the end of my military service, Never a hero, never in the company of heroes, I did the job I was assigned to do and learned To enjoy it, gaining from it memories, images I Will never forget, and the GI Bill that funded The last two years of my college education And later a job in the early 70s helping Young veterans returned from the jungle, Needing assistance to reassert their civilian life, Near children, leaving their service 3 or 4 years Younger then I was when I went in, leaving me unwilling on occasions like today to consider myself as anything but a subsidiary to the Band of Brothers….  let us consider dreams sometimes I dream I am the hero flying on a white horse across a purple waving prairie; sometimes I dream I am the prairie ancient, clean, vibrant and fertile, forever waving beneath the sun and clouds slowly drifting; sometimes I am the clouds soft and billowy, traveling continents and oceans beneath the warming sun, beneath the cool, yellow moon; sometimes I am the sun and moon, sisters in a sky on the edge of stars gleaming, stars afire in the black eternal space of a god deeply sleeping; sometimes I am that sleeping god, dreaming that I am a white horse flying across the purple waving pastures of my forever spreading home…. sometimes I wake, sorry to be still lonely among my kind, sorry to be awake again in the world of undreaming…  As I've told my story a couple of times before, I published my first couple of poems in the late 60s, while completing college after military service. Then I quit writing for nearly 30 years as family and profession took all my attention. When I returned to writing I was mostly interested in stories I had collected over the years. That, and the fact that I am basically a primitive in my writing and in my art, causes some to question my claim as a poet and an artist. Bullshit I say! I consider nomenclature irrelevant. I label my stuff "poetry" and "art" because in our culture, nothing is acknowledged until it is labelled. I labelled this piece "poetry" when I wrote it and when it was published in The Green Tricycle. It is the story of a portion of the experiences I had as a Peace Corp trainee in 1964. The piece tells the story of a three-day trek over the Monzana Mountains in the second week of December, 1964. December Passage Through the forested foothills we hiked, through the evergree cust of mountain chill and sun-warmed December desert, following an uphill, twisting trail cut by deer and bear and mountain cougar, until the horizon stretched red relow us and stars flickered bright overhead. On a rough and rocky slope we slept, amid the whisperine feral rustlle of wild nocturned life.. In the silent dawn we woke, under dim, gloomy skies. Lightly falling snow was soon a flurry, then a pale storm, then a curtain of white, finally a cloak wrapped tightly around us, muffling the sights and sounds of our passage. Through swirling white we trekked, bucking our packs up a zigzag path, finaly, over the crest, to a clearing covered in a mantle of snow, protected from the frigid wind by encircling trees. We rested for the night in this high refuge, kindling a fire to warm our circled camp. We turned our backs to the encroaching dark, drawing close around the blaze and, under a canopy of stars flickering in the black crystal night, singing songs many of us learned on Civil Rights marches, sharing the warm and radiant light of the jittering flames, Later, secure in the glow of crackling embers, we pulled dthe cold, clear night around us and slept. We woke to blood-bracing cold in the pink-tinged dark that signals the approach of sunrise. Dawn broke, silent and still, and the air was clean and clear, the storm over. High, high overhead, the track of an invisible jet sliced twine lines of white across the deep, dark blue of the cold morning sky, neatly thin lines at first, well-defined and stark, then swelling into broad bands of gauzy white that spread across the empyreal vault above us, the dissapated and disapparaed. Like the contrails of the jet above us, we began to stretch out along the trail on the downhill passage, drifting apart again, the mountains kinship fading, dissipating under the centrifugal force of journey's end  let us consider life and death white knight at one end of the jousting field, resplendent in white armor, horse draped in white armor as well, brilliant in the noon sun, Lancelot I think it was, the King’s champion, the Queen’s lover... and onto the field rides the mystery of the black knight, a huge man on a huge horse, unknown, as black as Lancelot was white, a spoiler in the game… and we all know, sitting in our theater seats, that this is going to be a battle between good and bad, dark and light, life and death and there it is… the essence of the battle we fight between birth and the end, the life-light that is born with us, and that we carry with us, the sunshine of all the days allotted to us and the inevitable everlasting dark the black at the end of tunnel, the final mysterious fall into the nothing and nowhere of night so deep we lose our place forever, lost to the dark forever the white, the shining light of life, the brilliance of all possible good wrapped around us, our cocoon of potential protecting us from the black that always surrounds us, the dark that daily tries to seduce us into its cold embrace… a fight we all know we will lose in the end for black is the natural state all around us, the natural state of us and all our works as well, broken for a short spell by the sun passing over us, rising, then falling, true to its end as must we be to our own  Lord, could you at least do this one thing for me it’s a bright, beautiful day outside and the dog waits in the car for a walk but three weeks into three weeks of head cold and cedar fever allergy miseries I am so weak and disoriented (in the sixties and seventies, people would have paid good money for a hit of this other-worldly inter-dimensionality, this stepping over clouds beneath my feet, this head-butting the late-setting moon, this twisted lattice of space and time and fear of flying and just plain old reality-slippage, like sand draining through my ears) but then is then and now is now, at least I think so, and the fun is gone and I would really like a hit of bed, instead pillow-plumping-covers-covering sleep, days or at least long enough for this damn minds-eye muddle to subside… someone call in the developers, strip the north hills of all cedar trees right down to the limestone, free me o lord of snifflers of thy heavy hand of allergens or, if that’s too much to ask, o lord you could at least take fifteen minutes from your celestial obligation to keep the stars burning and bright and walk my poor dog for me  let us consider magic let us imagine magic is real that a young man with a trumpet can blow down the walls of a mighty city; that the dead can rise; that a man can walk on water and a boy can fly; let us imagine that all we know not can be learned through the dim arts of magic, that the truth of all lies buried in Merlin’s secret cave; that once there was a Camelot that love and truth and beauty flowered there under the rule of a sorcerer's magic; let us imagine a world where the witches of west and north and south and east rule all but the realm of a counterfeit wizard; let us imagine yellow brick roads and loaves and fishes and water to wine and the power of goodness forever triumphant over the bane of evil; let us imagine love everlasting; let us imagine life unfettered by anger and fear; let us live as we imagine; imagine as we live all the better lives that might live within us  discovery’s rapture Sunday morning at Barnes & Noble, where we are just about every Sunday morning, coffee, newspapers, new books to see which ones I’ll steal on my Kindle as soon as we’re back outside… a family, middle aged parents, three children, ranging from 10 or so to 6 or so, all well-dressed, maybe for church, not for one of the more elaborate, dress-up churches like the Methodist or Presbyterian, you know the ones where men wear suits and women wear hats, more like the Catholics who’ll take anyone no matter how bad they smell, and one of the Pentecostals where cleaning the tractor grease out from under your fingernails constitutes dressing for church… but, wait, I got off track… what I meant to say is that this was just a very normal-looking twenty-first century family, visiting a bookstore, the only thing unusual, the wonder in which they seem to take in their surroundings, all of which I think would seem very normal to most… being mostly an observational poet, I watch people and pick up on small things, sometimes imagining I have learned secrets about people, sometimes just making stuff up based on three seconds of watching this family first caught my attention when they walked past our table and the oldest boy made a comment about what a huge bookstore it was, seeming odd to me since it isn't so huge, and I don’t think most ten-year-old boys would notice even if it was huge, and if they did notice wouldn’t comment on it, but he was very excited, even more excited when he saw the escalators, and then, later, when he saw the elevator, so struck that he blurted out in a near squeal how it was such a big bookstore it even has its own elevator and finally, as I happened to be following the father into the men’s room, I almost ran into him when he went to a dead stop, staring in palpable confusion, if not outright disbelief, at the mens' room sign which included the helpful notice that there was a baby changing station inside I swear for a minute it seemed he was near deciding not to go in, apparently seeing something very alien about a mens' room with a baby changing station inside, like, whatever was going on in there it obviously could not be a real mens' room and he wasn’t sure about taking a chance on what might happen to him and his manliness if he went inside… ~~~ now it might be that I’m more attuned to tiny irregularities in the normal flow of life in the universe and it might seem that I’m over-reacting to such tiny blips, but life, for me, is but a never-ending series of tiny blips that an acutely aware person such as myself observe and sort, wheat blips here, chaff blips there, life as it normally passes on this planet, so long home to me, here and life that can only be leakage from an alien universe there... that is a bigger question and not relevant to right here right now… what is relevant to right here, right now, is how the whole confluence of observations reminds me of when I was six or seven years old and I opened my Red Ryder lunchbox at school and discovered that my mother had sliced my sandwich diagonally instead of across the middle, making my sandwich square into two sandwich triangles instead of the normal two rectangular sandwiches… it was the first time I had ever seen such a thing, the first time my mother had ever done that, or at least, the first she had done it in my presence - she may have done it many times before, but she was quite a bit older than me, and maybe I just never knew about it… I thought it was wonderful, this crazy explosion of sandwich possibilities, so avant garde, this diagonal sandwich slicing, and probably only something rich people did, being, with all their riches, well past the point of humdrum rectangular sandwiches, and on that first day of sandwich revelation, looking into my lunchbox, looking at the little pointy-end sandwiches, just looking at their pointy little corners, sent me soaring into a fancy-pants world I could have barely imagined before… ~~~ and I so hope the visit of that oh-so-regular-looking family brought to them the same rapture of discovery as triangular sandwiches brought to me  The Spot let us consider skin there is much to consider in the matter of skin… at its most basic a natural packaging, keeping all the gooey parts in; for many years and for some less enlightened still, a shortcut for identifying social, moral and philosophical status in shades of lightest white to darkest black; also for many years, protection against the coldest winter day and snuggly comfort of a chilly night, and even now for some, a status symbol, social status determined by the kinds and number of skins one can carry upon one’s most stylish back; all that I understand, but for me the best of skin is the pink skin of a kitten’s belly and the soft skin and scent of a freshly powdered baby and, oh, that long slow glide of skin upon skin in my lovers bed at midnight - that’s the very best use of skin I can think of…  a cowboy should be tough enough did it again, dressed for yesterday’s weather, Hawaiian shirt, black with big red flowers of probably Hawaiian origin, looking, it seemed to me as I studied it in the mirror this morning, very much like a cowboy shirt (except for the missing fringe) close enough to a cowboy shirt to remind me that rodeo is just around the corner, the first signs of it, the cowboy breakfast this morning (for the 45th year) soft tacos and coffee for about 75,000 people, very few of whom are actually cowboys, except this once a year when they get up at 4 a.m. and put on their cowboy hat and cowboy boots and fight heavy cowboy traffic to the big parking lot over by Freeman Coliseum, while, at the same time, approaching now from all over South Texas and other cowboy lands to the west and north and even east a few Cajun bayou cowboys, trail riders, bank clerks, school teachers, and insurance salesmen and the grizzled fella from down the street and occasional actual cowboys and cowgirls, all bundled up against the cold, moseying in on their horses from days and nights on the trail, pots and kettles clattering on the sides of their chuckwagons, and sometime soon, the cattle drive down Commerce Street through the middle of downtown, which seems to have some kind of secret launching date because I always want to take pictures of it but somehow never know about it until it’s over and I’m thinking maybe this year I can find out where to go and get there ahead of time and I’m thinking I ought to be doing that right now, right after I cross the last “t” and dot the last “I” on this little ramble, all, like this ramble, another dodge my dog would say, to avoid going for a walk in 50 degree weather in my Hawaiian, and I’m thinking, cause cowboys are supposed to be tough and not deterred when I comes time to herd their herd, that maybe I should reorient my thinking and based on the similarity of appearance, I should come to understand that a cowboy shirt is just an Hawaiian shirt with fringe benefits and conversely maybe I should think of this Hawaiian shirt as just a cowboy shirt de-fringed and that should make me a cowboy tough enough, as befits my kind, to go walk the dog  let us consider the best of times the little blond haired girl riding her tricycle in front of your house when you were three; the ’49 Plymouth you overhauled with your dad, never went more than 45 miles-per-hour, but, oh, that first drive so sweet; the first great afternoon of sex on the beach, never mind the sunburned ass or the sand lodged in delicate places for her name was Julie and we loved each other for at least three weeks; and later the girl in the back seat, not Julie, for that love gone, but never forgotten, she, with great billowy breasts, lying back against soft cloth seats, astride her like riding hot waves in a great sailing ship with white billowing sails; the wedding, vows complete, the stately recessional past guest standing, applauding, your father in an pew by the aisle, your father who disapproved of the venue and said he would not come, in a pew by the aisle, thumbs up as you and your bride pass; the baby, one month old, in your arms for the first time, tiny, tiny crying thing who will not stop for you or for his new mother, silently sleeping within a minute of being held by your mother, his new grandmother; the look in the eyes of your child when they ask you a question, knowing, that of all the moms and dads in the world you are the one who will know the answer; the band, your son’s first band, first hearing, the blast of horns and guitars and drums, realizing how good they are… the best times of a life… =========== some hold the notion that the good times lie still ahead; while the realist with an accumulation of years comes to accept best times of our lives lie not in the future but in the past, in the memories we hold dear…  my iron cross I have a cross made of two rough iron nails, each about 4 inches long, hanging over the door to my office, given to me by a friend, a believer who has affection for me and who wished to share with me the peace she finds in her faith though I am not a believer I do have similar affection for my friend and respect her unassuming and deeply held beliefs and was honored by her gift and the peace she hoped to bring to me and pleased, also, because the cross is a beautiful piece of rough-hewn art, the long iron spikes, elemental truth in the integrity of their coarse construction, as if the hands of their maker, the purpose and life of the iron worker artist is imprinted on every ridge and groove of their irregular surface and because it is an illustration of how art can embody the essence of meanings, the iron nails, old and heavy and sharp and crude as the nails belief says pierced the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, relics, almost, placed on my wall, a great story hanging over my head every time I pass through the door - a reminder to the poet that, true or not, believed or not, great stories have great power… and that it is the poet’s job to find the stories that bring that power to all who read them one does not have to believe the stories in order to respect and honor them because they are a reflection of our human desires for a better place and a better time, our search for a better self, a glimpse of the divine… some stories are bloody and cruel, but the need to believe, whatever the story, reflects the human thrust to find a place beyond the restrictions of our evolutionary heritage, to find a more human way to be human.. it is the way, through one story or another, all of us find our way  let us consider the random occurrence of good and bad poems some poets are determined to write wonderful poems but since they don’t feel capable of writing the wonderful poems they imagine they write no poems at all; some poets are determined to write wonderful poems and since the poems they write do not seem to them as wonderful as they would like they throw them away; some poets are determined to write wonderful poems and since the first poem the write is less than wonderful, they rewrite it over and over and over again, never writing another poem, concentrating all their poetry strength and creativity on making that unwonderful poem wonderful; and some poets (like me), born with no poetic shame, just say what the hell with it and write poems and poems and poems, confident in the random distribution in the universe of good and bad and certain as the bad poems accumulate, there will be a good one coming any time, maybe even a wonderful one… ========================================== and what about this poem, one might ask,,, though I doubt it is wonderful, might it be good or is it bad? don’t answer that, My Critic, because whether it’s good or bad I’m going to write another one tomorrow anyway…  let us consider the rot of progress tomorrow I will watch the sun rise over gently stirring waters of the Gulf of Mexico as I have done many time in years passed loading up a pick-up truck or beat-up station wagon with friends and driving to the island, where we gather driftwood and start a fire that would burn all night as we watched the bright stars that shine in the inky black gulf night, with the whisper of the tides ever constant, doing their dosey doe, In and out, with the turning world until the sun rises from the sea, turns the water orange and then the morning, an orange, then yellow ball that brings the sky to cloudless blue… but that was then… tomorrow I will watch the sun rise over the gulf from the ninth floor balcony of my brother-in-law’s condominium, buildings like this one either side, the days when we would come in our pick-ups and station wagons long passed, the stubby low sand dunes that were the island, covered now by a city of towers and restaurants and grocery stores and a fire station and a chamber of commerce, all that makes a city a city, planted, to grow forever… but I know as many do not seem to know, that the storm will come because the storm will always come, always on it’s own schedule, blowing across the Gulf bringing tornado winds and rain and a flood surge that will clean bare the island, some will die, mostly new ones who do not understand the storm and it’s power and do not listen to those who know and much pain will afflict the others who built the glistening towers and supermarkets and chamber of commerce will feel sad for those who died by their own ignorance and I will feel the pain on those who bet fortunes against the certainties of chance... and when it is all done, when the pearl colored sand glistens bare again on moonlit nights, and the stars shine in the inky black sky and the tides whisper in and out all night… I will return and gather firewood and build a fire to burn all night celebrating earlier times and never forgotten nights…  better than the 3,438th rerun (unless Ginger gets naked) I did a reading last night to a small (I prefer the word, select) group and I wore my reading boots because while they add an inch to my height, more important, they add 6 to 8 inches to my ego and ego’s pretty darn important if you’re going to write something and call it poetry and expect people with more pressing things on their mind to sit quietly and maybe even listen and be appropriately amazed or at least decide it’s what the heck better than the 3,438th rerun of Gilligan’s Island and boy does that old Skipper ever get mad at Gilligan even though I don’t think the Skipper is much of a skipper and it’s probably his fault the Minnow got lost even though he always blames it on Gilligan and I think everyone on the island including that sweet Mary Jane understands exactly how she got stuck on this island with that horny professor who mainly has the hots for Ginger and couldn’t care less about that sweet Mary Ann but you know you have to have some kind of drama even on a previously deserted island or you’ll never get to 3,438 reruns unless Ginger takes off her clothes and swims naked in Gilligan’s lagoon but this is family TV from a time when families didn’t have sex and I’m glad of that because if Ginger had gone swimming naked in Gilligan’s lagoon any chance I might have of even a small audience (I prefer “select”) willing to sit and listen to me reading my poetry even in my reading boots could be described in just three words "fat chance, Skipper"  let us consider those who dare no man wishes to be called a coward yet there is a political movement in our country day building on waves of cowardice how to explain when in reality it costs little to be brave, one person in a city of millions stands up to the fear, displaying not bravery but trust in the mathematical certainty that there is safety in numbers… it being so easy to take such a “brave” position why are so many choosing to hide under their beds… disdaining such spineless behavior I declare now that I am one with the resistance, ready to stand firm against the barbarian hordes… standing stalwart at the shoulders of the valiant defenders but expect you will have to find me in my one in a million cave first…  Let us consider our span of time I was born Before the bomb fell on Hiroshima But lived under its cloud For most of my youth I weas young When black men were beaten For ordering coffee And an all-white lunch counter I was young When a manmade object Was sent high above To circle our planet I was young When a human foot First broke crusty surface Of the moon I was young When a president Was murdered In Dallas I was young When a black man (not the first) Was murdered On a motel balcony I was young When South Texas heat Was inevitable And unavoidable Anywhere But in the homes Of the well-to-do I was young When years of foreign wars Threatened my generation And more who followed I was young When a president Voided his oath And his honor and was Sent away in exile Now I am old And it seems no lessons Of my life Were learned by anyone Who matters Now I am old And it seems The only peace Is Still The peace of the dead  where do boys go to?
where do boys go to these days to see horned toads and tarantulas, where are the red-ant beds to piss on, and the dirt roads and arroyos to chase down on tough, stripped-down bicycles (the bicycles they ride today would fold their delicate little frames into a submissive heap if ever introduced to a dirt road) where are the muddy fields to play slip and slide and the thick brush where boys can hide from the world and girls and grown-ups and smoke Parliament cigarettes, where are the places where boys can be boys, where mischief can be innocent and nothing is forever or and never means until tomorrow, ~~~ “I’m looking under a dress of wonder that I overlooked before” we sang with not a clue of what was “under” and free to make it up as we went along, imagination we assumed made us experts where do boys go today to capture such gift of innocent ignorance… is there a place safe for such innocence, such ignorance as eased us into the harsher truth of it all…
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