1
INDICTMENTS:
Poems In Four Counts
Bill Bauer2 3
For my wife, Kathy, and Erik and Laura4
Indictments: Poems in Four Counts
2nd Ed.
Graphic Design: Eric Bader
Editor: Brian Daldorph
Copyright © 2021, 2025 Bill Bauer
All rights reserved
Published by Coal City Press
with support from University of Kansas Libraries5
CONTENTS
COUNT ONE
A Short History Of America … 11
Life As A Commercial … 12
First World Folie … 13
Indictments …14
So …15
Breakfast In Suburbia … 16
Self Made … 17
Nondeductible … 18
A Workingman’s Hands … 19
Bottom Lines … 20
Out In A Dry Rain … 21
Once In Manhattan … 22
The Offices At Twenty-One West Tenth … 23
Sales … 24
Neighborhoods Of Shady Streets … 25
An American Family … 26
Social Diseases … 27
Alumni … 28
Argyle Socks … 29
Dressing Barbie … 30
Vagabond … 31
Senior Delinquents … 32
Trash … 33
2000 Something In America … 34
Deserted Front Porches … 35
A Brief Analysis Of The Situation … 36
Bubble … 37
Bars In Mountain Towns … 38
In The Reign Of Our Terror … 39
The Pigeons Of Chernoble … 40
Country Club Man … 42
“Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam” … 436
COUNT TWO
Chalk Against Cement … 45
Eyes of Owls … 46
American Dachau … 47
Child Geography … 48
Lion Tamers … 49
Tough Love … 50
The Boys Of Rio … 51
Leather Jackets … 52
Brat … 53
Big Wheels … 54
Ashes … 55
The Piety Dogs … 56
Off Kilter … 57
Laughing Boy … 58
Red Brick Apartments … 59
Yellow Acrylic … 60
When I Was An Actor … 61
Down The Baby Food Aisle … 62
Running In The Rain … 63
The Graduation Of John J … 64
Children Of No-Count Wars … 65
Little Girl with Ancient Eyes … 66
COUNT THREE
A Belated Letter To My Draft Board … 68
Door Ajar … 69
Bobby Kennedy Has Been Shot … 70
Silver Scar … 71
Cardboard Revolution … 72
Mission On A Sultry Day … 74
Swashbucklers … 75
Ratan Rises Existential … 76
Plans For A Rambling House … 78
Tailor Shop Window … 79
Stride … 80
Saturday Soldiers … 81
Bunker Line Songs … 82
A Cicada Shell … 83
Another Memorial Day … 847
COUNT FOUR
Natural Law … 86
Dying As Another Science Project … 87
Hit Man … 89
On The Nature Of Tumors … 90
Almost Died … 91
The Question … 92
They… 93
A Campaign Against Ex Cetera … 94
At The Women’s March … 95
The Case Against God … 96
Wounded Birds … 97
Between Beachfront Hotels … 98
Death Of The Javelina … 99
Elk Season … 100
So Went The Quagga … 101
‘n, … 102
Under Leaves … 103
A Breach Of Nature … 104
Driftwood … 105
The Malice Of Snow … 106
Organic … 107
Murderous Thoughts … 109
Time On Earth … 110
At The Great Divide … 111
I Cry Easy Now … 112
The Brown Bagger … 113
Dad In The Dock … 114
On The Backs Of Old Men … 115
After The Great Liberation … 116
Attic Fan … 117
The Man In The Window By The Sea… 118
The Coming Of The Far Forest … 119
Fit For Life … 120
The Old Reporter … 121
Late in October … 122
The Silenced … 123
The Search for a Peaceful Life … 1248
“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote
so many years ago; to tame the savageness of man
and make gentle the life of this world…”
Robert Kennedy’s response to the assassination
of Martin Luther King, Jr.9
INDICTMENTS:
Poems In Four Counts
Bill Bauer10
COUNT ONE
“The establishment is made of little men –
very frightened”
– Bella Absug11
A SHORT HISTORY
OF AMERICA
Frontier to frontier
the great explorers
took whatever
they could shoot, slash,
shackle or steal
with ships, fire sticks,
disease and deception,
imported slaves
to work their fields,
to build mansions
and monuments,
gorged themselves
on the bounty
of mountains and grasslands,
ravaged and trampled them
as fast as they could,
and squandered
their plunder
one kindergarten class
at a time12
LIFE AS A COMMERCIAL
A big sale is coming, the marketing of a century
Elvis and Marilyn and JFK have been spotted
in megamalls where cartoon characters hand out
coupons to the bargain hunting classes
Kings and queens and small time dictators
open glitzy dungeons to pay for ancestral castles
and the President’s memoir is already out for bid
I watch the honored saloonkeepers of my childhood
scramble to go global with ancient family recipes,
charlatans rush to the internet to hawk get-rich deals,
tear-jerk videos of orphans in the Holy Land,
snake oil cures for cancer, old age and low testosterone,
nonsense in tiny jars
The anchor with the practiced grin on cable news
doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry, if it’s time again
to show “All items half off,” play the $9.99 card,
weave more conspiracy theories for bored old men,
or shout, “Collateral damage in Iraq!” “Armageddon!”,
and wonders if anyone in TV land is even listening
or just flipping channels for better deals
When life’s a commercial and kings buffoons
Time floats away in silly balloons13
FIRST WORLD FOLIE
Inhabitants of the Great American Suburb
easily forget
they are born angry for a reason
Never touched
by the blunt finger of evil
in war or by nature
they grasp gladness
with a hardy handshake
believing it is fully earned
There’s nothing they can do
about an archbishop arriving
at the cathedral steps in a stretch limo
in the capitol of a Third World country,
compliments of El Presidente;
about masked men with uzis
stalking small boys foraging
through trash cans at night
in the barrios of their birth
or ravens dining on a delicacy
of human eyes after a landslide
downhill from a mining camp
Nothing at all14
INDICTMENTS
Woman, man,
man, woman,
plaintiffs straight
as corn stalks,
formal as jurists,
knees pressed
together,
palms on thighs,
waiting, sighing
on a wooden bench
at a bus stop
aiming their blackness
directly at me,
a white guy
in a luxury sedan,
first in line
at a red traffic signal,
forced to face them,
corner eyed
“Hurry,
green
light!
Hurry!”
I am begging,
I am praying:
“Go!”15
SO
Squat, dark and foreign looking,
she leans close to plowed snow piles
to pull a small boy by the hand
along the narrow highway
in the mountains of Colorado
hoping to avoid fast moving pickups
and semis splattering slush
A paper sack hanging off
her other arm, she might be
on her way to the food pantry
or leaving him at a babysitter
while she cleans toilets
at the ski lodge
I slow down, swing wide –
even then, the young mother
sweeps him behind her body
against the snowbank
until I drive by
She may be one of the lucky ones
the generous townspeople will present
with a one-way bus ticket downhill
to the big city, free of charge,
via their Greyhound Ministry
In this country that brags of greatness,
in this world preachers say
God has made for us all, surely,
life was not meant to be
so16
BREAKFAST IN SUBURBIA
The secret’s not hidden in the sweetness
of the sugar or the color of the flakes,
the CONTENTS or NUTRITIONAL FACTS,
not in the surprise toy or breakfast prayer,
plastic cowboys, rubber Indians or G.I. Joe,
the jingle of a commercial, a rock song, MTV,
X-rated movies, tabloids or teen magazines,
not kept by the children who roam the malls,
have sex after school or smoke pot
It’s buried in the myth of the American Dream
pictured on the box17
SELF MADE
Look at you now,
Mr. Hotshot, Ms. CEO,
all puffed up,
boasting you’ve earned
the spotlight
completely on your own
Maybe you did have
nothing more
than a childhood
in a drafty apartment,
dry cereal most days,
fearful streets,
handouts for clothes,
filthy clinics for the flu,
only one lousy
stinkin’ teacher who thought
you just might be worth
a damn
Did you make your own genes?
Choose the time and place
of your birth?
Earn those other gifts of luck
and circumstance
that dropped at your feet?
Nothing there to chisel into stone,
no bragging rights
to wave at the clouds
or stir small kids
of little hope
to leap with joy18
NONDEDUCTIBLE
I’ve been told not to hand a dollar
or a twenty out a car window
to a man on a corner by a stop light
holding up a scribbled cardboard sign
His scattered oily hair, yellow skin,
clouded eyes, unsettle me
Conventional wisdom dictates
he’ll just buy booze or drugs
On another corner on my way walking
past a fast food joint three young
black ladies stand jiving, jangling coins
in used paper cups and I say,
“I only give to organized charities,”
but the liveliest holds up her cup and grins,
“Hey, mister, I am an organized charity!”
She too is nondeductible as I was
on late July nights after escaping
my family home at seventeen
from a crazy father and learned
to toss on the boards of park benches
and the cushions of a front porch glider
at the house of an old high school friend
who took a chance, woke me before dawn
so his parents would not find me asleep
I don’t remember saying, “Thank you,” only
having him send me forth quiet and confused
into the hazy morning
Must be an instinct, the theology of eyes,
to stick a hand through air to another’s hand
stained with loss, dirt and pain19
A WORKINGMAN’S HANDS
A man heaving a pick will not tolerate a fool’s laugh,
nor take to a man leaning on a shovel watching as he digs
Why, then, did we look at each other and laugh
on an afternoon of freezing rain as we hurried
in three-piece suits, cashmere overcoats, colorful mufflers,
to appointments inside buildings with marble floors,
at men in hard hats and heavy laced boots,
men dressed in winter jackets and thick mittens,
their breath as heavy as gases escaping manholes,
men grunting as they lifted and carried long black pipes?
“Glad it’s them, not me,” I think one of us said,
no more complaints about desk jobs,
the pressure of deadlines and quotas,
the next CEO change, the next market report –
“At least we’ll be dry and warm”
I was glad too and yet I wondered about old uncles
on farms with the same solid faces of those men,
biceps a woman could admire and know they hadn’t
been gained in a gym with a trainer in tights
In a thousand years when we can no longer dig without robots,
when we’ve forgotten sweat and the smell of the fields,
when what we eat and drink will be manufactured not grown,
we might need men with picks and shovels, pliers and screwdrivers,
axes and plows, nails and wrenches, hack saws and planes,
men who know how to use them and make backhoes work,
a lost civilization to be dug out of the ground, their artifacts
admired by school children and hung on museum walls
“How foolish we are,” I thought later that day
staring out a thirty-story window into the haze,
“We men of soft hands”20
BOTTOM LINES
Able boys who once hustled in mail rooms
now sprout green from foggy MBA halls
to magically bloom as CEOs at forty stories,
chalk still on their hands, cell phone, laptop,
the tools of their trade held tight and close,
they hurry through revolving doors, laze
on extra-long yachts in tropical harbors,
in hot tubs, on their bellies for massage,
toss back cocktails past midnight
to help daylight disappear
In this Age of Slick, there is no cubicle
wide enough for the beast to prowl,
deep enough for the mutt to dig,
and for that prize they wear the rest:
latest shoe models, conservative suits,
fashionable ties, perfect hair
I see them in the bubble of First Class A/C
flip through life to bright screens of P & L-s that glow
over stick-like children in the sharp, jagged rubble
of war zones flashed on cable news
And over the forest where I snowshoed one winter
in the fresh scent of unmarked snow,
up where the pines and wildflowers smelled strong
in late summer just before the aspens turned
above the tree line where the black bear sleeps21
OUT IN A DRY RAIN
The bartender was a Jack or an Eddie,
chunky chested, tall and Irish,
with a mongrel mustache hiding clear disgust,
who nodded left and right with a black-eyed glare,
moved wordless up and down the bar
in broad suspenders and rolled sleeves
digging ice with highball glasses as he went;
who shook their usuals at 4:30 p.m. –
the O’Tooles, Kings, Roarks and Schmidts –
in the chatter and smoke of a three-man combo,
happy hour secretaries tapping ashtrays,
laughing at each other or nothing at all;
who sent them home, middle-aged men
sagging in their souls
through deserted, brightly lighted
Manhattan streets that shone
black with slicks of rain,
the Kings and Roarks in need of jobs,
the others in need of women;
home into studio apartments
to melt into sleep
under lights of floor lamps
on stuffed colorless divans,
dress shirts yanked open at the place
where the stripes of their ties
formed the knot of the noose
that was part of the deal22
ONCE IN MANHATTAN
Few cats would wander into that little hotel
nor would a woman I might have looked for,
where the only sounds were of pigeons
outside the front door and the voices of drifters
sunk in overstuffed sofas in the open lobby
with talk of being writers, artists and rock stars
All the hopes I had hefted to that place
accumulated before me,
more than enough granite to build a temple
to worship self-doubt and despair
Each tower above the street was inscribed
with a famous name and I wandered below them
through the littered streets so late that night
only taxis clocked more miles
I want to remember it was raining,
the beer in the bar warm
and the beef bad
No, the piano bar was hopping
with young good-looking women,
the man on jazz piano knew
where he wanted to take us,
and the weather might have been clear
The names on the business cards
I found in my pockets the next morning
were the same as those on the skyscrapers
that hung so heavy over me,
and my memory of that night comes down
to mixed nuts in tiny dishes, bottle labels,
lonely strangers, days, seasons…
Ah, that’s it! Spring, Sunday night,
in the kingdom of rats and roaches23
THE OFFICES AT TWENTY-ONE WEST TENTH
Wilson leans on a stepladder
by the elevator in the lobby,
keys on a belt loop,
the air smelling strongly
of floor wax and fresh paint
Holding an umbrella
on rainy mornings
he rushes to hold the door
“Hiya doin’ now –
Watch your step
Floor is slick;”
manages fluorescent lights,
clogged toilets,
trash baskets,
sidewalk clutter
Any problems,
just give him a call
Saw him one day
in his broom closet
slapping a wet rag against
the scuffed-up wall,
dirty water dripping
in graffiti streaks
to the cement floor,
before he sharply
turned and asked:
“How may I hep you?”24
SALES
They’re about us who have to sell,
sell even in our sleep, about product,
about marketing in a leap at a wake-up call,
marketing as last thought before sleep,
about discounts, razor thin deals,
knowing how to close
About us, who can’t sit still without
a beer and a ball game;
about our work ethic, our numbers,
our motivation, our values:
are we easy to look at,
where do we live,
what cars do we drive?
The wife, can she entertain?
About manhattans with an imaginary pal,
a lousy salad and a cardboard fish chewed
on the edge of a bed in front of a TV,
a stack of trade journals, an easy paperback,
the cigar smoker down the hall
mixing his sour smell with the sharp stink
of unventilated bathrooms, saccharine cologne
About how we feel abandoned, let down,
yet we cannot slump or weep,
our eyes must blaze, we must be amazing,
high step out of elevators with the zest
of a running back on the two-yard line;
endure hardy handshakes with clients who will
help us cash out before our life insurance does
Always be gracious and laugh at their jokes
And whether we can fly home
on late Friday afternoons and face
our kids with a crooked wink,
a halfway hug and a briefcase of lies25
NEIGHBORHOODS OF SHADY STREETS
The man in a junkyard car creeping house to house
already knows what the tall, slatted fences
of their shallow backyards conceal:
Swing sets with plastic slides, colorful kick balls,
overturned trikes, hula hoops, a lost sandal,
a dog, head between paws, ears down on sparse grass
With the children at school, it’s quiet back there
Realtors writing Sunday classifieds call these places
“starter homes,” “peaches,” “cuties,” meaning small, old,
with cracked and leaking foundations, wood siding
in need of paint, new gutters, lawns calling for grass,
aging stone porches with balustrades where newlyweds
hold hands in the dark, drink too much and argue,
where the sound of unnamed voices from the angst
of dilapidated kitchens crisscross the air with words
flung back and forth through blackened screens that
can’t send them back
What the rooflines don’t shed the trees provide: leaves,
leaves of all sizes, portfolios and illuminations,
leaves that flutter and spin, that whisper and cool night,
that lull, that settle peacefully just before dawn
The man inching his battered car under aged trees before
the afternoon’s cumulous clouds have risen savors
each potted plant, smiling, swallowing grief, while above
and all about him, limb from limb, young squirrels leap
and birds go courting
Past his old address, he slowly turns a corner and heads
for a church that’s serving hamburger mac and cheese today,
the one dinner he knew how to fix before she took the kids
and moved away to a larger house with another man
in a distant state where they say it’s always summer
and rarely, if ever, rains or snows26
AN AMERICAN FAMILY
Dad, mom, girl and boy
dig a shelter under their house,
stock it with canned foods,
water jugs, a shotgun, two
semi-automatic rifles, ammo
and a shortwave radio
They dream themselves a cave
with a large moveable stone
blocking the entrance
under an invisible convex shield
called Star Wars
that hovers above their roof
to protect them against
incoming missiles and bombs
The temperature will always be
68 degrees and their laptops
charged by generators
powered by solar energy
and a secret power source
to be discovered soon
by holy men in the desert
The children will sleep well now
knowing that 9/ll only happens
in places inhabited by those
who have turned away from
the gods of their fathers27
SOCIAL DISEASES
Once a year at least
the self-anointed
tear ideas off library shelves,
padlock the gates of celluloid visions,
strip museum walls so
children can’t see what
their ancestors have done
Once a year at least
they parade their rusty cavalcades
through strip-mall towns,
flags snapping aside august sedans
for life and liberty,
past alleys that once were deer runs,
past sewers that once were streams,
past:
BILLIONS OF HAMBURGERS SOLD
GUARANTEED USED CARS
FOURTH OF JULY SALE-O-RAMA
SHOPPING CENTER COMING SOON
and all their other obscene signs28
ALUMNI
The words still tick off linoleum squares
where neophytes gone to “Sir” and “Ms.”
retrace gauntlets of university hallways
in search of adolescent voices
promising to right the world
Gone the voices of the others,
gone to courtrooms and board rooms,
to operating rooms and war rooms,
gone the chalky blackboard formulas
they were taught to follow,
gone before they learned
the heavy doors of their alma maters
would slam shut behind them
Here where physics now makes sense,
where the shades and shapes of botany
slide into the sap of autumnal regrets,
where biology under a microscope
expands across bathroom mirrors,
the voices of dapper doctors of the humanities
in tweed sports coats and Picasso ties
still shout out of the classrooms of their youth:
“Come on in then
Take your seats
The bell has rung!”29
ARGYLE SOCKS
Back in style
for men and women of means
who chase youth and beauty
and the shapes and colors
of one decade to the next,
the tartan hose of highlanders
will go with anything:
Cycles of wide ties, bow ties,
suspenders, pleated pants,
hemlines, cuffs, bell bottoms,
bermuda shorts, pin striped suits,
tasseled loafers, aboriginal sandals,
fedoras or berets;
Long hair, no hair, teased hair,
high class, no class;
Worship of the naked form,
heavy woolen garb,
patchwork of thoughts
that come back around
to warm the feet
of every graduation class that
ever threw their caps in the air;
Money spent and hours wasted
for the sake of haute couture
from the hum of the looms
in the sweat and the sorrow
in factories of afar
by the people of rags 30
DRESSING BARBIE
Their husbands sit on airplanes
fencing with laptops,
shoot golf on Saturday mornings,
daydream themselves NFL stars
on plasma screens
Mothers now, they know they
will never win beauty pageants –
Ken is just a doll –
or reign as homecoming queens,
figure skate in the Olympics,
star on the balance beam,
pose on magazine covers
One way or another,
like it or not,
come hell or high water,
how much it costs
or anyone who dares
stand in their way,
their daughters will31
VAGABOND
Well groomed at his perch
in a coffee shop where the cost
of a table is a cup of soylent black,
the narcissist brags to admirers he pays
no rent, no grocery bills, no taxes
An indigent, he sleeps in an extra-long van
he bought for peanuts at a repo auction,
dines at churches, dresses at Salvation Army,
showers and shaves at The Y
His coffee klatch cheers at stories of travels
on hundred-foot yachts as a gigolo or somebody’s pal,
suns, swims, whores and gambles on the come line
from the Caymans to Vanuatu
Just a pilgrim is all, a vagabond and free spirit,
unchained, a man on his own, dodging the usual drill
and the guardians of the gold
The café junkies nod and laugh not knowing
they traded him a coffee for the con of the day
and the total of his life at the bottom of their tab32
SENIOR DELINQUENTS
Cranky old, grouchy guys in undershirts,
hanging fat hairy arms out of car windows
as they zip in and out of traffic:
retirees on the dole, Medicare cheats,
griping at post offices across America,
dumping ashes on parking lot asphalt,
flicking fast food wrappers into the air,
taxing slick tires on curves
through national forests,
happily lying on income tax forms,
shoplifting when they can;
haven’t voted in years,
mooch off grandkids,
harangue neighbors
for cheap entertainment;
brag they were in the infantry but
don’t know a mortar from an M-l,
hang flags on their RV’s every Fourth
to piggyback on The Greatest Generation;
two helpings on Thanksgiving
at the community center;
cantankerous geezers coughing dark clouds
of spite from the tail pipes of vintage trucks
as they blow by mountain bikers on the highway;
pissing and moaning to bored wives
about the youth of today, slumming until
their actuarial tables max out
Once a punk, always a punk33
TRASH
Really? Flick cigarette butts
onto the grassy bluff above today’s
sapphire smooth ocean?
Down the path the sticky slime from
a crumpled soda can still spills onto
the scarlet petals of a flowering hibiscus
The plastic grocery bag caught on a tree limb
above a man on his back under a tree
clutters his view of rising cumulous clouds
through a kaleidoscope of leaves
Another man lets his dog leave a gnarly mess
in the center of a boardwalk to the ocean
where he might as well have deposited
his own mortal mounds for someone else
to pick up and toss aside
Be careful, I think –
there are landfills called cemeteries
filled with human remains
foraged and scattered
by prowling beasts, ashes
returned to oceans, urns
emptied for the wind to stir
And then there is trash, and how humanity
insults the beauty of the earth34
2000 SOMETHING IN AMERICA
Take a gangster like John Gotti or a gaggle of CEO’s
Some psychopaths wear uniforms, some don’t
One goes skiing, the other goes to jail
Politicians and prosecutors love this game
They’re fond of pounding their fists on high
about what today’s brats ought to be doing
“Don’t get caught with your pants down,”
would be the honest thing to say
from their own patchy experience;
“You could be the next dupe to land
upside down on the evening news”
But they weasel around it, bring up God,
and show the latest Hopes of the Future
how easy it is to lie, cheat and steal
Ignoring them, tattooed youth endlessly
skate on painted boards inside
shopping malls, on city sidewalks,
text, selfie and video their way
through the breezy arches of anarchy
into dystopian ghettos of the 21st Century
Outside their virtual universes the planet
continues its cycle of blossoms, browning leaves,
winter storms and thaws, wobbles oblong on its
predictable orbit with only a few old taxi drivers
to admit outright, “Life goes on without us”35
DESERTED FRONT PORCHES
Painful to sit and watch while cars
fight each other across lanes through streets
where giant trees once shaded front yards
of flower beds, stone gods and lamplights,
where wicker chairs unravel under chimes
that hang unheard above front porches railings
of neglected older homes with crumbling
Greco-Roman columns, balustrades
and Italianate cement pots,
where swings fall to one side on a single chain,
metal gliders weather to the quick,
rainbow pillows spit their stuffing,
rockers take breezes for company,
where nobody waves hello to strangers,
reads novels on verandas, writes to cousins
they haven’t seen in years, or smokes alone
in skivvies on front stoops to greet the sunrise,
where the old mutter out loud to themselves,
bend with water cans over flower beds,
knit afghans, joke too loud over hedges
in the evenings after a beer or Scotch,
where five ton trucks bang iron grates
carting loads of the soil and stones
of yesterday’s life and landmarks
to dump over cliffs into the sea36
A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF THE SITUATION
People who speak in affectations
survey the scope of the room to see
if anyone is watching them formulate
their next policy statement
The manipulation of the facial tissue
in conjunction with a constriction of the throat
produces an exaggerated articulation of each word
and a reapportionment of the lower lip
She might be an anchor woman
describing riots in another world
He’s testifying before a subcommittee
in expert cadence and pitch:
“Listen to me
I’m alone in a hotel room
eleven stories above it all,
out of cigarettes and falling asleep
with the New York Times
smeared all over my hands”37
BUBBLE
Inside is where the Haves hide
to avoid the wind, the news
In winter staying warm is key –
bourbon neat, nuts and chips,
sitcoms, football, galas
in five-star ballrooms
Ennui visits on gray days –
watching birds
through the membrane
grow smaller and smaller
until they
shrink into extinction38
BARS IN MOUNTAIN TOWNS
A waitress in Wranglers,
big buckle belt and black eye,
sings to jukebox ballads
as she juggles platters of draft beer
between tables to men of silence,
ponytails and ragged beards
A freshly stirred wood fire burns down
in a corner off the bar
Younger men at tables close to a TV
mounted high next to an elk trophy
shout and cheer and clink mugs
at a last minute jump shot
in the final game of the night,
look down a long wooden bar lined
with shot glasses of last swallows
Outside, the frozen darkness
hides zigzagging, rutted roads
to low rent trailer parks
from the last boomtown spree
No guarantee of work out there
in zero minus, minus,
no sweetheart to snuggle with
No fat chance an engine
in a once red pickup will turn over
in the black morning
or that its tires one day will crunch
to a stop in a gravel lot
at a better bar in a lively town
with men and women
of good will and good stead39
IN THE REIGN OF OUR TERROR
“There was a steel pole running from the floor to the ceiling behind
Gray’s chair, and we watched him slam his head into the pole for
eight minutes as hard as he could.”
– Newsweek Magazine, April 9, 1984
Some execute their wayward
with a square-shaped gun
held perpendicular to the skull,
and the forehead lights up
as if, by god,
interjected with a new idea
So dirty dogma deals
by sleight of hand,
by valve, by syringe, by kilowatt,
to lull, burn, shake
the cripple from his insight
We don’t proclaim our madness
on a street corner by the Ritz,
but we tie our shoes
and button each button,
and our insanity gurgles
in the throat of a man
strapped by intravenous tubes –
the rapist and killer
who acts out your sickness and mine
Suburban hangman,
what does the gray matter
when not to fold, bend or mutilate
matters more than
the clatter of the guillotine,
the bang of a trap door,
the steam of your witness
hyperventilating against the glass?40
THE PIGEONS OF CHERNOBYL
(The day after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, several hundred homing pigeons competing in an annual race were released in Lyon, France for a destination in Brussels, Belgium. Unlike previous races, only a few of the pigeons arrived.)
Each generation
fantasy birds visit earth
Mozart knew them,
so did Freud
For those who will listen
they tell stories yet unwritten,
transcribe testimony to the paradoxes
of existence
Revolutionaries shrill their slogans,
cannibals and cardinals
intone their forbidden canticles.
They dust sunsets with beatific visions
Now they are scattered over Europe,
lost in a nuclear storm,
the cord to intuition
clipped in the wisp of a millisecond
They sit dazed in the pine forests,
beaks ajar
like tiny children beaten for laughing
An official inquiry has concluded:
“Many questions still abound”
I want to know
what exhortation they carried,
how they will go back,
whether their eyes have grown narrow or wide,
if they feel as I did:
a boy falling backward
off a porch into a spreader bush,41
hearing the laughter of aunts and uncles,
my mother saying, “You’ll be all right”
Already I had entered
the unremitting dark42
COUNTRY CLUB MAN
Fifth generation, his eldest son now head of the firm,
two daughters well married, seven grandchildren,
heirs of the clan’s smart genes;
summer cabin on a lake, ski condo,
trusts in place, offshore accounts,
shaded evenings on the edges
of golf courses, championship grade,
two and a half martinis before dinner,
more friends than nights, model trains
like those of real life railroads
great-grandfathers built for cheap
on migrants’ backs;
coin and stamp collections, guns locked on racks
in rooms with aromas of Meerschaum pipes,
hand carved family crest hung above the bar
for the lords of the manor – once a boy
in shorts and sneakers mommy gently pulled
by the hand into clubhouses to model
for bridge table friends, so cute he was,
handsome still, and tanned in silver mane;
he waits for third wife seated at her dressing table
in a bedroom lavish as a penthouse suite
sipping a second getting-dressed drink;
a proud man rising on the toes of tasseled loafers,
marveling out loud on a deck above the ninth green
in purified air, “What a joy life is!”43
“THINE ALABASTER CITIES GLEAM”
(Hymn 719, Verse 3, Line 3, The Hymnal, 1982,
The Episcopal Church)
In the land of delusion and denial
latch key kids
roam pioneer malls searching for
frontiers of their own
Graying war vets move out again
wearing white laced sneakers
in platoons of twos and threes
dodging landmines of spit
and wads of gum
Half-eaten cheeseburgers
and pizza crusts
overflow trash bins onto
linoleum prairies littered
with crumpled dreams
These domed centers of humanity
shield new age marketplaces
of glittering chain stores and eateries
from the whims of nature
for those who hoard the plenty
And outside their walls, beneath the bridges,
in tenement buildings, along shabby streets,
hungry and abandoned children
of the great republic crouch hungry,
empty-handed, waiting for their ration
of the amber waves of grain
“America! America!”44
COUNT TWO
Sing me a dirge of the lost mother,
of the childhood never lived…45
CHALK AGAINST CEMENT
The leftover pieces of chalk
she uses on street corners
to draw the faces of women,
tall in high heels,
high fashion clothes,
waiting at stop lights,
are lipstick shades
She outlines their eyes
in mascara blues
and leaves them blank
On sunny days her drawings
color the intersections she crosses
on her way to somewhere unknown
until the nubs of chalk crumble
into powders marbling
her little girl hands
She works in quick hard slashes
with a fury that causes her subjects
to step back and wonder
if something might be wrong,
where she lives and goes to school,
and should they make a call
Just a latch key kid, they figure,
who never looks up twice
once she begins sketching
and never answers back
except to say, “Fine”46
EYES OF OWLS
The latch key kids,
Tamika, Charles
and his sister,
Rebecca, have them
They perch on front porch stoops
staring at passing cars
in the little light that’s left
making wisecracks
with a sharpness
that is frightening
I never know if they’ve
had their supper or not
I’ve seen them often
walking home from school
in knee deep snow
leading each other
by the hand
After sundown their houses
are dark inside
They are no strangers
to the night47
AMERICAN DAUCHAU
If I had the power of Hitler’s army, Kayla,
my tanks would rumble across the sunken asphalt
of your schoolyard prison,
and sweep you away to one of those neighborhoods
where sprinklers keep the bluegrass green
and little girls wear new
the dresses grandma brings from the thrift store rack
I’d drive my tanks up the terraces of those pious men
who dole out pocket change and are fond of saying,
“God helps those who help themselves.”
My tanks would circle your house, Kayla,
and you could sleep all night,
go to school without being afraid
No one would stand you in line at the clinic.
No mean uncle would grind away your soul
against the rough ribs of a yellow mattress48
CHILD GEOGRAPHY
A black boy slumped in a third hand desk
in a shabby classroom in a crumbling school
in a graffiti scarred hood
disappears into a picture on half a page
in a textbook scribbled with crayon
into a rain forest of greenness, soft earth
and shade marbled by sunlight streaking
through a triple-canopy jungle
where pigmy children in loin cloths
laugh and play in a circle of huts
made of sturdy sticks and mud,
their mothers breast feeding babies
overseen by matriarchs stirring wooden bowls
and tiny men with spears standing guard,
in a picture in a torn and faded book
in a shabby classroom
where he daydreams himself inside a hut
asleep in the soft breezes of night
under a thatched roof of broad leaves
and nobody named Charles lurks outside
waiting to take him down49
LION TAMERS
We old lion tamers
usually cry
at the damnedest of times:
reading the newspaper on the toilet;
watching TV while everyone sleeps
An old lion tamer
can cry looking at the refrigerator
We remember how it was
We don’t want any more paws
“Away loud growls and scary eyes!
Away hurtful incisors,”
once and for all
We move around our houses
as we did in our cages,
backs pressed against bars,
brandishing whips
in case they try to sneak in:
“Back, lion!” we snap
“Back, beast!”
Even when we crack our whips
and shout commands
we are still crying
It’s not easy being a lion tamer
We remember all those times
we were six years old50
TOUGH LOVE
What that boy lacked was a heavy dose
of old-fashioned ways,
the preacher told the worried couple,
a limitation on his mouth and mind,
the strap of the covenant
and Biblical bread
Nature left without a course
grows wild and out of bounds,
seeks perverse corners,
needs direction for its crazy moves,
he said with great conviction
They gave him this gift of love,
a love so tough
it locked him in his room
and he spread it across the wall
with his daddy’s four-ten
“Ain’t much good,” his note read51
THE BOYS OF RIO
The vigilantes need them badly,
trophies cut at the neck,
stuffed exhibits, eyes stuck
in the present by men
in camouflage and heavy boots,
to clear from rat’s nests
in favela storefronts
They need the sound of the blast,
the surprised leap children make
during midnight ambushes in grungy alleys,
need to know their trigger fingers
can become metaphysical
in the name of God
They need to creep close to the smell
of dirt and blood, inhale the fear
given off by small animals on the run,
stalk them through shattered glass,
strip, beat and chain them to lamp posts
in the squares, guilty or not guilty,
send them, children of Cain,
straight to hell52
LEATHER JACKETS
Only the janitor could open the transoms
They locked the windows to stop us from running
Our coaches carried four foot paddles
drilled with one inch holes,
slammed them into our asses
until our faces exploded,
swung again and again to break us in half
A fourth of the freshman girls became mothers,
wailed loudly in the halls and blamed us
Some of my friends did time or probation
for shoplifting, burglary, or car theft
Others shot heroin in the bathrooms
All of us escaped our homes for midnight asphalt,
swigging quart bottles of watery beer
For gangs from other schools
we wound links of tire chain around fists
hidden in the pockets of our leather jackets,
hoping to sidestep an ice pick
or dodge a baseball bat
From our parents and teachers we learned
to shield our faces with a raised elbow
and keep our best hand free53
BRAT
Born “James,”
James answered to “James”
when his mother called;
to “brat” when his father did
Baptized “James,” James believed
the shouting and shoving
he heard hiding under his sheets,
the slapping and sobbing
that came from the other bedroom,
wasn’t caused by James
but by “that brat”
His older brothers and sisters,
cousins, aunts and uncles,
dudes in high school
called James, “Brat,”
By then, James himself did,
answered to it,
signed “Brat” instead of “James,”
and after he was sentenced to prison
for a very long time,
that was the last anyone
ever heard of James54
BIG WHEELS
Their throats roared to Harley heights, exhaust sounds
of “vroom, vroom,” jarring old folks on front porch swings
nipping at harsh coffee from assorted mugs on the first
spring morning when they could sit outside since frigid air
laid down the snow that smashed the jonquils, and now
here were these kids in ball caps and fat legs rearing high
on plastic tricycles with mammoth wheels tearing up sidewalks,
skinny sisters chasing aside them barefoot, screaming:
“It’s my turn, it’s my turn now” – but no, they kept going,
never looked back, never noticing how those little girls
banged their toes on cement cracks, the sun-struck hot shots
clutched the handle bars of their bikes, cranking for more
and more speed that led them to collide, mouths ajar,
scattered into a tableau of bodies tumbling forward from
twisted oversized bikes into bloodied shock
Still upright beside them, tiny breasts heaving, the girls stood
silently, fearlessly, blouses wet against soft skin, faces held
lovely, dignified, against the light55
ASHES
High school inmates waiting for a bus flick ashes
to the sidewalk not knowing there will be
more ashes in their lifetime than they can smear
outside unemployment offices, kitchens where they will
wash dishes, do anything to escape being told what to do,
outside funeral parlors where candles light up the deceased,
on the floors of jeeps on roads to battlefields,
on groggy mornings when they wake to find dreams
stubbed into half eaten slices of last night’s pizza,
the ashtrays of the young and hopeful before them who
have tried to jive and laugh away their fears
Their fathers ejected butts on caddy shack floors,
flicked them into the dark outside boxing gyms,
into toilets, in defiance of nuns, snitches, preachers
who warned them they would have hell to pay,
for playing with fire and smoke and truth
Their mothers too, once off the bus, exhaled upward
into the jubilant air, dawdling the short distance
to staid and staged living rooms, to middle age,
burned holes through satin dresses after proms,
exhaled downward through their noses
into the fresh skin of their cleavage not knowing
the price they would pay for being themselves
No need to preach damnation to the children of ashes
They will dump their own on the asphalt
of parking lots outside shopping malls
as their parents and teachers and holy men did,
find new ways to crush them underfoot and curse
the relentless cycle of the mundane56
THE PIETY DOGS
In 1953 the archbishop unleashed them into our parish
with an edict of excommunication for anyone who dared
buy a ticket at the small neighborhood theater to see a movie
stamped obscene by the Council of Decency unhappily titled,
“The Moon Is Blue”
My friends and I snuck through the exit behind the screen to watch
a silly film that showed us nothing like the nude photos we found
in magazines and discarded albums dug out of trash bins behind
the apartments we passed every day on our way home from school
Making out with our girl friends at the local park we joked about
the crazy old man’s spies hiding in the bushes ready to pounce
at each illicit touch, writing down our names and addresses
to add to the lists of the damned
I swear I could hear them panting in the darkness of my sleep,
waking in the morning with memories of red-eyed hounds
drooling at me through the windows of my impure dreams
They rooted into our Friday night dates, marriages and affairs,
granted us in their cruel pursuit no sacred ground
We stumbled anyway into the dark without shame, challenged
the night to find our way into the arms and mouths and necks,
the warm and lovely breasts and thighs of our lovers
Not even the divine could stop us57
OFF KILTER
In my hands nails bent,
threads stripped,
saws wobbled,
drills went walking
On my back with my father
under a broken car
hours after most people slept,
I thought of the girl I loved
and kept burning his ear lobe
with the extension light
“Dammit,“ he howled,
“if you’re mooning over women,
they don’t give out that much,
and besides….” he swore,
feeling for a wrench across cold cement,
“it’s highly overrated”
He never explained
the workings of things,
why our gears never meshed,
why whatever I tried to do
was never plum
Why his love had to be
as complicated as the engine
of an old V-858
LAUGHING BOY
Surprising to hear him –
so tiny and quiet
he seems invisible –
at age four suddenly to laugh
from the corner of a living room
crowded with brothers and sisters,
aunts and in-laws after
the funeral and family brunch,
skinny arms and legs akimbo,
holding his stomach,
chuckling to an unseen friend
at the bickering over who gets what
Now and then he lets go a cackling laugh
that cuts the chatter, turning heads
to see who is laughing and what
is so damn funny
at such a terrible time
And he keeps on laughing
at the rest of what they say
until exiled into the backyard
for knowing phony when he hears it,
and laughs on the swing set
legs in the air, head tossed back,
taking the wind59
RED BRICK APARTMENTS
The school year Mrs. Werner was den mother she had
a nightclub act at a midtown hotel with a horseshoe bar
She practiced with her partner in the living room during
cub scout meetings while we cut and pasted construction paper
teepees for wildlife badges and filled in outdoor worksheets
Her partner, Juliette, played the piano and Mrs. Werner sang
40’s and 50’s standards like “Blue Moon,” and “Besame Mucho”
Her son, Bobbie, explained that Mr. Werner traveled on airplanes
and was looking for a house in Pittsburgh
Bobbie was the only cub scout who actually lived in an apartment
and owned a pair of binoculars and a championship yoyo
An architect’s rendering that hung in the entrance of each building
showed the apartments in neat rows with steep roofs, red bricks,
cement stoops, a front window in each unit, nine panes in each window, each with white paper shades pulled down, faux white shutters,
oak trees, green grass along the walk and flower beds never planted,
which will explain an older man’s memory and a boy’s reality,
given that the following October the acorns dropped early
and Bobbie Werner didn’t come back to school:
The reality, hidden from passers-by many years later, of children,
as people in cars one might have seen them then, their hands,
faces, noses and foreheads pressed hard against window panes,
looking out into the gray, waiting for Bobby Werner’s mother
to return and finally award them their insignias, their Wolf badges,
the promises made to them as children by grownups like Mrs. Werner
who secretly leave town and trash piled in the hall60
YELLOW ACRYLIC
In autumn in front of Linda’s two story apartment building
half hidden from traffic by a line of maple trees, large leaves
still paint the sidewalks in glossy shining yellow shapes
that winter wears dull but cannot erase
When Linda lived there, the shadows of the trees turned
the shade to navy blue, and even with cars streaking past,
Linda and I on our way home from the playground
stopped without words to look into the luminous glow
that seemed made just for us to walk through
I drive uphill these days past her apartment into the suburbs,
see leaf stains on the same broken cement squares like those
left on summer afternoons after a rain storm
Linda no longer walks beside me, gone when her mom suddenly
moved her to California leaving no forwarding address and only
the deepest color of yellow to remind me there once was a certain
brilliance on one of the last sidewalks of my youth, and today
on the canvas of my life there is none61
WHEN I WAS AN ACTOR
I wore a sharp black beard
as a temple guard
in the grade school passion play,
a brown broom mustache
as Mr. Thorkelson
in I Remember Mama
on the high school stage,
and a sloppy suit when poorly cast
as Simon Stimson in Our Town
for my collegiate thespian debut
Waiting for our turns in the limelight
we joked and petted behind curtains
that smelled of old perfume and oil paint,
blew our cues and lines and tried hard
not to laugh when we did
The late night walk home
through the neighborhood
was lined with critics,
the flash of passing car lights,
the applause of crickets and tree frogs
I go back into character whenever
I watch the piano player
straighten the bench and pull at his fingers62
DOWN THE BABY FOOD AISLE
Can’t be so, feeling fifteen again,
doing inventory on the night shift
in a supermarket where linoleum glows
but does not click, standing alone in
an empty aisle of nightmare florescence,
next to shelves of canned vegetables, boxes
of facial tissue, paper towels, laundry soap,
cleansers, disinfectants, abandonment,
suspended time, echoes of old men
with hearing aids saying “Howdy”
to friends they haven’t seen in years
Then a wrong turn down another aisle
soon to be filled with the chatter of women
pushing carts loaded with chicken, tuna,
juices, salad dressing, movie magazines,
and the faces of those whose only dirt spills
into disposable diapers and who will look up
at me sacking groceries on the morning shift
with smiles and slobber and, damn them,
those Cherrios eyes63
RUNNING IN THE RAIN
Two boys on a tear
zigzag through traffic
in a downpour
in front of my sedate sedan,
laughing, leaping, hooting,
joyful, reckless
Cranky and old in a warm car,
heavy on the horn as I swerve,
I look up and see it is my youth
I’ve just missed,
running wet and cold,
a rebel in the rain64
THE GRADUATION OF JOHN J
(Kansas City, Missouri – 1961)
From that first morning in the hall
outside homeroom hour
John J and I joked together, shot pool,
studied in the library, ran laps together
around the practice field
He squashed me to the linoleum
with his huge black hand
if I beamed too long over a grade
I threw trash at his face
when he splattered opinions
out of a mouth full of lunch
We were tight that way
The remains of those hundreds of days
when the only excitement was a fire drill
smile out at me from a stamp sized square
in our high school yearbook,
one of a few dark faces in a class of eighty,
bright with a look that makes hope seem dull:
A face that sobbed on the school steps
the day before a senior party at a white girl’s house,
left off the invitation list for fear
the neighbors would raise hell about seeing
a black guy dancing in a backyard on their block
Even as I swore, “John, I won’t go,”
he shoved me off with his bare elbow,
shoved off into the din of the riotous streets65
CHILDREN OF NO COUNT WARS
We feel no need to hold them,
give them hope for disfigured shapes,
struggles to walk, see, hear, feed,
clean themselves, for arms to hold them
when they cry out
They are not our children
They are faraway children, grandchildren,
of The Bomb, Agent Orange, land mines,
necessary casualties of legacies we showered
on their ancestors, deposited in their genes,
by reckless disregard
They are brandished in uncomfortable photos,
seen in junk mail, disruptive commercials,
telephone calls for charity scams
We have two oceans, rivers,
mountain ranges, missile shields,
young volunteer soldiers to carry out
our wars of the abstract, on television,
in sci-fi movies, on cell phones
at thumb’s reach, without stench,
searing heat, below freezing days,
nights without light
Guilt is not in our vocabulary
Their grandfathers, their uncles,
started it66
LITTLE GIRL WITH ANCIENT EYES
(1980)
The East Indian girl in a worn sarong,
refuge’s rucksack at her feet,
slumps against mommy on a bench
at Penn Station on a Friday afternoon
where I slump weary of my own wars
up and down Wall Street
I want to know if she’s
thinking what I am thinking
as I look up at the immense
glass ceiling
Is this all there is or is there
something more?
She seems too young
to have seen what her eyes
say she has seen,
the expression on her face
too blank to care what I know
or don’t know about how
she has lived life so far or
where the next train will take her
When she sees me notice her
she doesn’t bother to blink,
lays her head on mommy’s lap
on her way to yet another journey
to escape the nightmare world67
COUNT THREE
“All the brave soldiers that cannot get older
have been asking after you…”
– “Daylight Again”, Crosby, Stills & Nash68
A BELATED LETTER TO MY DRAFT BOARD
In 1966
in that tiny room
behind a wooden desk
you issued a life sentence
without parole
Neither you
nor the Federal Government
knew what you were doing
yet you insisted
you knew everything
Look at us,
people of power,
I mean,
really look at us now,
we old soldiers
See what you did69
DOOR AJAR
I kept it slightly open,
the storage closet where
I hid the nightmares
in an older house
in the wooden box where I packed
the jungle boots, medals,
VC propaganda leaflets,
because like the criminal
I was and I wasn’t,
I kept going back there,
to be caught, to be set free,
for someone to peek in,
to turn away, to be aghast,
to shake me and say
“Wake up, it’s just another
one of those dreams,”
to give me absolution,
to close the door, to lock it,
ditch the key I made,
entomb the goddamned mess
I brought home
from that foreign grove
and could not throw away,
because I could not let
the trashman
see what I had done,
and I see it even now,
a box in a dumpster,
the crack of the lid,
what I hid there70
BOBBY KENNEDY HAS BEEN SHOT
“Duty, honor, country” – words –
lies preached to young soldiers
to take arms for political gain.
After the older brother, Bobby was next.
Nobody stepped in to take his place.
He was the end of it, the last of hope.
The words came down the line to us,
draftees outside the chow hall at Fort Carson:
Bobby shot three times at the hands of a lunatic.
I should have AWOL’d to Chicago right then,
raged in the streets, thrown bottles, lit fires,
crossed into Canada, into the woods, the hills.
Believe me, the biggest problem in America
was not the long hairs or the blacks or the gooks.
It was the bullshit, the big shots and phonies,
saying one thing, doing another.
They ordered us to forget our girlfriends,
sleep with M-16’s, Code of Conduct manuals.
Fortunate sons ate in officer’s clubs,
flew high over battlefields, awarded each other
medals, ribbons, to wear on dress greens.
For us, it was crap out of tin cans,
rusty water covered with dust.
As a keeper of hope I should have
hoarded it in mountain caves for
the next generation of suckers.
Mine dropped out, sold out.
Bobby Kennedy was dead, and the marchers
moved on for the money leaving
their protests in old TV clips.
Young people, don’t believe them.
You will end up legless, with no face.
Stick with guys like Bobby Kennedy.
He got right down to it.71
SILVER SCAR
After the rocket, still alive and
shaking in the dirt, I laughed silly
before I heard their screams,
ran to see what it had done
What I saw and heard silenced me,
forever froze my eyes, my gut,
at the sight of blood and gore
I did not know until I woke
suddenly with a shout
that the explosion of long ago
was the moment when
molten metal blocked all tears,
made my kisses cold
Now, before I sleep I brush
away the sheen of memory
to find again a better morning
when I was five years old,
my mother laughing at me
for no special reason72
CARDBOARD REVOLUTION
Sammie and Henry and Karen and Harriet,
the 4F’s they called themselves –
the “Fucking Fearsome Fighting Foursome” –
on the Wednesday before Memorial Day
in 1966 during the Vietnam War,
dreamed up a rally against LBJ’s tour
through the middle of the city,
handed out flyers on street corners,
nailed them to trees, shouted to students
before classes, passersby at malls,
to form an awesome protest
They slashed the backs of posters
Henry stole from the campus store
with slogans in psychedelic script:
“No More War!”, “Peace Now!
“Bring…Back! Little… Buddy!”,
the fraternity clown drafted
for missing two semesters
due to lack of ample coin
And when the cavalcade rolled by them
standing alone in a small huddle, fists in the air,
the 4F’s chanted into megaphones as LBJ
waved his thick fingers at the patriotic crowd cheering
hand over heart, hailing the red, white and blue,
proud of their country, proud of the boys
they watched dying in clusters on the evening news
“Damn,” the 4F’s later lamented between classes
in grad schools the following autumn,
in pristine offices high above working class stiffs,
in start-up homes in gentrified zones,
“all that time in the hot sun and
Little Buddy still got his ass blown away”
And they mourned the rest of their lives
the loss of those hours they sacrificed
scribbling on the cardboard signs73
they trashed in a loose pile at the intersection
of 14th and South streets,
stood by helplessly as the sanitation department
hauled their hard and dangerous work
to the town dump the very next day74
MISSION ON A SULTRY DAY
Fast off a chopper to deliver
a jeep battery to a small fire base,
I juggle the damn thing
with both hands as I run,
M-16 swinging across my back,
helmet, grenades bouncing,
and once inside the wire,
am startled by a loud blast, shouts,
grunts scurrying, diving for cover,
an unshaven bare-headed kid
with ragged-red flat top,
buck-toothed, flushed-faced,
hysterical, laughing, shirtless,
in jungle fatigues and boots,
waving a sawed-off shotgun,
jumping bandy-legged, hollering,
“Got that mofo!
Got me a gook!” –
A young VC, head half gone,
AK-47 aside, plastic explosive
gripped in one hand,
arm over his shoulder
“You!” I am ordered
“Grab a bandolier!
On patrol, right now!”
With that sharp command
and bloodied visage
I wake some mornings when
the sun is bright and I feel blue,
looking down at a sign
spray-painted in large white letters
on the brown wall of a sandbagged bunker:
“WELCOME TO CAMBODIA”75
SWASHBUCKLERS
Fellow soldiers, I write to you as a fly on the wall
from the office of the general of the 25th Division
in Cu Chi, South Vietnam
After the Korea flop, majors, colonels, generals,
the Pentagon, defense contractors, secretaries of state,
were desperate for another war to prove themselves
They yanked me out of graduate school to fight
for their personal gain, prestige and power,
to test their latest war toys and strategies
Career officers hurry daily in and out of these rooms
to kiss the ass of the commanding general,
swing custom-made six shooters from cowboy belts:
braggadocios telling war stories of their own gallantry,
the battles they flew over while their troops crawled
through the mud and snow of the 38th Parallel
They know a lot about dropping soda bottles from planes
that whistle on their way down to intimidate peasants,
how to get the most out of captives by pushing them
one by one out of helicopters; how to threaten village chiefs
with raping their granddaughters; by torching whole villages
to warn them against hiding Viet Cong
They do not know that I, a simple corporal typing reports,
will remember every detail, every lie, every exaggeration,
that in the privacy of this place they only talk about
themselves, their exploits, their next promotions –
And that I never hear them talk about you
Mailed To General Delivery,
One day in July, 196976
RATAN RISES EXISTENTIAL
Ten days into bivouac in rain and snow,
the draftees settled on one side of a small hill,
zipped into sleeping bags, smoked, talked some,
and as the air cooled and a fine drizzle fell,
covered their heads as best they could
in the musty smell of military mold
They slept but not well; the ground was lumpy;
their backpacks tough pillows; skin spongy
in the heavy woolen uniforms; yet they chilled
as they took them off, put them on,
squirming like larva in an early frost
At dawn, Ratan woke first,
pulled his cap across his forehead,
and staggered to the crest of the hill
in skivvies and unlaced boots
carrying only his cigarettes and lighter
“Look! See!” he quickly shouted,
lifting and spreading his arms to the dull sky
“Observe nature; observe how
half thee hill is barren with dew,
thee other half covered with snow,
parted right down thee middle as a macheteee
might split thee skull of a gook in twain”
“Aw fuck you, Phil,” the other soldiers shouted back,
and would have shot him if their weapons were loaded
“Too damn early for your bullshit! Go back to sleep!”
Ratan squatted on his haunches, lit a cigarette
He couldn’t tell the smoke from the cloud of his breath
“See here,” he told himself “Just as I have proclaimed
A wonderment hath happened in thee universe
On thee one side, thee snow; on the other side, thee dew
What doth such portend?”77
They said he knelt like that until the medics arrived, carried him
catatonic in frozen form and strapped him into a field ambulance
The lesser men in our platoon jealously grumbled Ratan had just
bought himself a ticket out of The Nam
I have been thinking since that whatever Ratan saw looking out
from the Janus-faced hilltop revealed more intel than known by all
the generals, CIA analysts and brain trusts in Washington, D.C.
The word in 1966 among retired NCO’s who owned the bars
outside the base in Greater Tacoma, grinning as they said it,
was that this was going to be a very…very…long…long…war78
PLANS FOR A RAMBLING HOUSE
There would be three stories, weathered shake shingles,
a tall brick chimney, wraparound porches with spindles,
bay windows in a ramshackle house with gables built
far back from the street in an older part of town;
trees half hiding the place, full oaks, a massive sycamore
over dappled grass, free falling willows, Japanese maples,
a dirt path to a grassy backyard, a winding gravel drive
There would be a drawing room with hard wood floors,
a large stone fireplace, ancient area rugs,
an arched foyer with chandelier, floral wallpaper,
alcoves for reading, a kitchen with hanging pots,
a round stained glass window at the peak,
a red brick patio for cooking out, for playing guitars,
a place for runaway girls to laugh out loud at last
We would have kabob afternoons, taco parties,
overturned milk crates for making speeches,
for Jackleg Johnnys on the sofa telling happy lies,
a wooden deck for sunning together in the nude;
a cottage in the rear for anyone passing through,
a dormer for painting in the early morning light,
a platter of fresh baked cookies on a little round table
just inside the front door for gray winter days
There would be a house like that during haiku summers
where free spirits could gather for love,
and no presidents or kings could send their generals
to drag us off to war79
TAILOR SHOP WINDOW
Old Manchu, I thought you were a manikin sitting there
in mandarin robes, a tassel hanging from your round cap,
blankly staring into this busy street with obsidian eyes
until you raised one brow a flicker above the spool
of your ancient sewing machine and stroked
the thin threads of beard that hung
immutably from the needle of your chin
Did your family lose its fortune at the end of the Qing Dynasty?
Did your young wife die in the escape from Chairman Mao?
I lost mine to madness for fear I would not return to her
from the Vietnam War
By the Red Lightning insignia on my jacket you can see
I too am “Manchu,” 4th of the 9th Infantry, Tay Ninh Province
Some buttons are missing and the sleeve is breaking apart
at the seam on the left shoulder
Maybe if I come inside you can mend it and tell me
a wise man’s story80
STRIDE
A man hiking a path as a form of meditation
marches as he was ordered to march
in military formation on his way to a no-count war,
shuffles as a man might shuffle after breakfast in later life
to a room with a single bed in a nursing home
In the choppy footfalls of his march he lifts his eyes
from the ground onto the expanse of the ocean,
to bulbous clusters of expanding clouds,
to red blossoms atop bougainvillea bushes;
To young women dashing by with their dogs
and says aloud to himself, “Stride…stride…”
stretches his legs out long, quickens the pace,
finds hillocks, hops ruts, slips around
couples pushing carriages, holding hands,
strides to his destination at a café table
where a cup of very hot, very black coffee
and a very rich cinnamon roll under a cumulus
of very thick vanilla frosting soothes the fear
he cannot wish away just by wishing
Having felt his stride anew he brings himself to sit still,
to the sensation of how good it is to finally arrive
in the sanity of early morning where doves
have settled in the deep cool grass,
to a place where he no longer hears the wounded
calling out for their mothers81
SATURDAY SOLDIERS
Manly musketeers, fierce female warriors,
insignias tattooed on muscled skin,
dressed in camouflage and military boots,
armed with secret codes and full magazines,
they strut with assault rifles at the ready,
set forth from tree to tree for combat
with deer, elk and unseen foes
As children, the G.I. Joes and Janes
shot rubber soldiers, crushed them
under tanks and jeeps in bloodless battles,
defended God and country against
the same bad guys they saw at the movies,
through televised scopes
Children still, in search of medals pinned
on soldiers in real firefights, on decks of ships,
they yearn for parades and accolades,
to be seen, feared and revered for strength,
stealth and courage, admired as
the elite corps of their generation
They have yet to win the battles they lost
on the floors of playrooms, in stadiums,
on the streets and in the offices
where they rarely scored acclaim
It is their time to claim their rights,
to perform their duty to guard against
the champions of change82
BUNKER LINE SONGS
Late nights I watched them in a circle
of muted flashlights banging an old guitar,
sucking harmonicas, keeping time with the crust
of their jungle boots, singing protest songs,
the latest Beatles tune, ballads of homeland betrayals
Back from checking the wire I often found them
laying in stupors around a hookah like little boys
finally worn down at the end of an overnight
at a friend’s house back in The World
Charlie was out there waiting,
sorely wanting us out of his country
Old man of the squad I stood watch with
an untrusty M-16, bowie knife and grenades
until I slumped and slept against a sandbag wall
I still catch myself driving on the now foreign streets
of my childhood city, singing the lines of songs
we sang back then of loss and regret and betrayal,
lines I keep repeating one by one:
“I heard the news today oh boy…”
“I ain’t no fortunate son…”
“We gotta get outta this place,”
lines stuck on the scratchy CDs of my brain
Never since have I found “Oh say can you see,”
worth a salute, a tear or losing any sleep over83
A CICADA SHELL
Poised in place on a drooping oak leaf
to launch again the insect it once enclosed,
the molt stands as a monument
to its seventeen years underground
waiting for a single season in the wind
The creature it was has flown
The ghost cannot hear the rhythms
of its autumn refrain,
nor flee the ferocity of wasps
in pursuit of its buzzing flesh
A soldier back from a no-count war
stares down at this crisp brown form
and remembers the songs he sang
on his way to see Tina before
her mother came home from work84
ANOTHER MEMORIAL DAY
The young soldiers melting away
in these coming-home boxes
will never hear the grandiose speeches
of war weasels who’ve never
fired a round in combat
The fallen have already spoken
for themselves out of names
tapped into granite monuments
and gravestones
No more now
Just stand down
Stop bragging,
chest pounding
Shut up
Listen85
COUNT FOUR
“Consideration of particle emission from black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays dice, but also throws them where they cannot be seen.”
Stephen Hawking86
NATURAL LAW
Lovers will love the one
they crave
Stars explode into being,
gravitate into black holes
Water doesn’t know
drought from flood
Trees obey the rhythms
of the winds
Snakes strike by instinct
at whatever moves
The cat lays a kill
at its master’s feet
A man with a stolen grocery cart
does the best he can
That’s the law87
DYING AS ANOTHER SCIENCE PROJECT
A cheap clock that stops mid-tick tells me more than the scowl
of a hooded figure with its scythe of evil intent
The spent battery no longer has the juice to keep the hands
of the timekeeper waving, hello, goodbye, see you later…
As a child I knew about movement, just as later I knew
moving inside a lover’s body was motion not to be feared
The woman smelled so differently, her voice changing in ways
that made a song, any song, lack primal sound
The slinking figure of fairy tale books was meant
to keep me from riding a tree limb into the stirrings
of the wind in the great oaks of a nearby park,
to keep me from flying if I could, to keep me
from talking back, from screaming a bitter truth
So what?, I told the old bag hiding inside her black habits,
if I tell you what you really look like, “and you, geezer,”
leaning over my desk that your breath smells of soot
and your theology means nothing more than a rancid belch
People like you sent me with a lie to lay in basecamp dirt
with a rocket curving towards me in a growl from the sky
I didn’t give the Halloween specter a single backward thought
What came to me was not to ask forgiveness or cringe in guilt
My own juices were flowing, finally flowing in arms and legs and teeth
as if the woman was next to me again and we were laughing,
“Now we’ll know if there’s an eternity or not!”
Not to know the outcome of our simple experiment, to be flattened
against gravel and dust, left for a lifetime to resolve the world’s insanities,
remains the great untested hypothesis 88
We will await another chance for the moon and sun to cross,
for coyotes to howl, for the shaman to spread his acrid smoke
between soldiers on the ground and the monsters of myth89
HIT MAN
There’s a knock on the door
I think name, rank, serial number,
what I did with those days in my time trust,
how much love I murdered slamming the phone,
how many ideas I flushed in fear,
what words I had for the person
across the table I smiled upon,
how much shame I swallowed
to keep the peace,
how much I lost when the sun
came to sit with me
on balcony confessionals
and I refused to feel
There’s another knock and I invite in
whomever, whatever it is
I want this gruesome business
to be over, done with
“It’s time,” I say to no one
“Come ahead, I’m ready
Let’s have at it
I didn’t make this world
Somebody else did”
“Bring it on!”90
ON THE NATURE OF TUMORS
I come to bring him the book of philosophy
we discussed drunk late last night
He is seated alone in a medical center lab
on a Sunday afternoon
moving the spectrometer back and forth
across a raw piece of tissue that appears
to be a cut of supermarket steak
Above his worktable is a shelf
with an ulcerated foot and ankle,
a jaw, a knee joint, other unidentified
body parts in zip lock bags
I see that my neighbor, the intern pathologist,
has already gone sour at a young age
and speaks in grunts
“What’s that?” I ask about the specimen clicking
under his handheld instrument
“Somebody’s liver,” he says without looking up
I set the book on a little table behind him and leave
Not talkative today91
ALMOST DIED
For an unknown segment of timeless, limitless space,
I – bless myself – was almost GOD
Neither kings nor queens, prophets nor gurus, celibates nor
teetotalers, televangelists nor snake oil salesmen, hypocrites
nor sycophants in long beards and funny robes, have ever
been hip to what I had in mind for creation
There on the operating table without further notice
I reversed the foolishness of all religions and trimmed
church budgets to eliminate cathedrals, gold chalices,
marble altars and collection baskets so kids and old folks alike
could benefit from my fields of grain, clear waters, breezes
of floral scents, heavens swept clean of particulates and tornadoes
I booted monks and nuns out of monasteries, put them to work
in factories and kindergartens, ordered them to pray and eat
heartily on their own dime without trashing their joy and light
I canceled sin and hell from Sunday sermons, cirrhosis,
heart murmurs, strokes, cancers and Cadillac’s;
added hootenannies, beer busts, line dancing, taco parties,
horseshoes, water fights, erotica, crap shoots
Women and men could be gay or straight, mix and match,
priests or magnates or whatever else they chose to be,
free to cavort and marry, be moms and dads or not,
live in peace on my earth, make love loudly and often
I removed shame from nakedness, allowed children to touch
my leafy hands, smell me in rain and fresh snow, sing loudly
with song birds, hear me in streams and rock and roll, savor
the general opulence of my cornucopia, relish their thoughts,
their desires, without guilt or fear, on and on when suddenly…
I came to, opened my eyes, began to heal, I suppose, a simple
nude man under a sheet, no longer omnipotent, no longer divine92
THE QUESTION
I miss a plane mid-winter
in an airport midway,
with not enough time to change
and more than enough time to think,
trudge to a snack bar
to be comforted with a grilled
ham and cheese on rye by a woman
who’s almost too frail to flip it
A man in blue uniform rests a broom
against the deli case,
sweeps a cup of coffee from the counter,
lands it smoothly on a round table top
“O, whatzit all about anyway, Agnes?”
he booms over the darkness of his java
with a mean glance at me looking
blankly at him for a clue
I hurry to the last flight of the day,
stuck between his question and a heavy man
yakking about semiconductors
all the way to Cincinnati
Even in my dream before landing
I hear him betting me “ten to one”
I’ll never figure it out93
THEY
I have never seen or met
the phantoms of the street,
the cognoscenti hidden inside
elaborate ceremonial robes,
try to spot them when
browsing at the zoo,
speculate they might exist
only on a distant planet.
On walks I peek behind trees,
inside trash bins,
glance over my shoulder,
beyond the next turn.
Nobody there.
I hear their certainty
quoted as in “They say that…”
much like the fictional,
“We find that…”
I strive to read between the lines,
watch for clues in classified ads,
the subliminal in TV commercials,
look forward to shaking
their ethereal hands –
“they,” who must really be
somebody to know all that.
Aristotle called an appeal
to invisible experts a fallacy –
self-appointed authorities
with the inside scoop:
“They,” of the secret society
of the last word.94
A CAMPAIGN AGAINST “EX CETERA”
“Ex cetera”
does not
mean
“et cetera”
Ex cetera excludes
“all other things”
It means nothing
Do not tell the world nothing
The world already knows
too much about nothing
It knows too much
about words
said wrong,
bloody words
carelessly tossed about
in dark, cold caves
of misunderstanding95
AT THE WOMEN’S MARCH
I saw again the mama-san
who spat in my face
in a Nam latrine
on a TV clip of the protest
at the Washington Mall
in the 21st Century
She’s the same woman I see
on street corners,
face tattooed with hate,
still shaking her fist
for the right to be
a person of value
Her look ails me still,
the unarmed bystander,
never to feel the gentle kiss
she might once have given
a boy who loved her
in the days when a kiss
might have moved her
to stand back and smile96
THE CASE AGAINST GOD
At the edge of my lanai
a hummingbird dazzles
over the stamen
of a gardenia bloom
An alert myna from nowhere
plucks it midair
with a moist “schlupp!”
into the untouched breeze,
sweeps smartly down
the slope to an opening
in green groundcover,
drops the catch on a bare spot
between three others of its kind
that hop closer, twitch
their heads and beaks,
feast upon the delicate specter
Watching from my lawn chair
I can’t seem to bring
back the sight
of the hummingbird
hovering there
Gone too, the question
I had97
WOUNDED BIRDS
On the stone path
to my cabin door
I find Flickers slammed
against windows
in last night’s storm,
feathers glittering
with drifted snow
Some summer mornings
the corpses of Cardinals
pierced by cats
lay under feeders,
feathers scattered
in the slow shifting
of the early sun
If there is purpose inside a storm
or reason for killing by cat,
a force outside the circle
of our knowing
must be what sends us
back into the cold
to hunt it down98
BETWEEN BEACHFRONT HOTELS
Earthworm, I met your uncle
yesterday
dried up and black
on this very concrete path,
two hundred years too late
to warm himself in the sun
on the mud flats giving up
sprouts of fresh growth
after morning rain
If I carry you dangling
into the cool wet grass
you may get another shot
at showing your grandchildren
there is still real love
in the world that exists
after television99
DEATH OF THE JAVELINA
A feral pig in last moments
burrows into the sand trap
on a desert golf course
digging its dignity hole,
whines and cries,
messes itself
until it twitches still
I did not create its pain
and am helpless to end it,
this spectacle,
this intrinsic contradiction
of creation,
the source of many myths
told to us as children
about the safety of our souls
to help us fall asleep100
ELK SEASON
Hunters with carcass tags
and bragging rights,
the manly smell of oiled stocks,
camouflaged jackets and heavy boots,
march into the cold
to play soldiers again
and notch another kill
Meat for steaks and stews
are another reason for the hunt,
and then again there’s
the thinning of the herd
to keep nature in line
Some mornings during season
I wake to find elk inside my fences
as large and looming as buffalo
They lift their heads
at the report of scoped rifles
When I point my camera,
they slowly amble into the woods
and ever as slowly return
Old timers swear elk know where
to find “No Hunting” signs
One early dawn as I stood
at the storm door of my cabin
a bull with an eight-point rack
climbed the steps of the porch
and looked into the glass101
SO WENT THE QUAGGA
Fated to be half this, half that, subspecies
quagga quagga, part horse, part zebra,
striped from head to gird, brown from gird to rump,
last photographed in 1870 in an Amsterdam zoo,
was chased into extinction for meat and hide,
and now appears as a pencil drawing in a fold
of the American Heritage Dictionary
Should you be one of similar subspecies,
part man, part horse behind,
adorned in pin stripes and jaunty tie,
think how you might look running –
one tasseled loafer on, one off –
from the barrel of a predator
whose only wish is to blow you
into extinction
Or how you might appear
in a black and white pencil drawing
in a dictionary in the next century,
or in a meme on the internet
frozen in a photograph looking
two faced, scared shitless,
stuck forever with the caption,
“Horse’s Ass”102
‘n,
Here see the nature of the horse:
tail up, nose down,
one end taking in,
other end disposing.
We are as simple as that
Let us, then, be
humbled
by
horses103
UNDER LEAVES
Tripped into sunlight
stone reveals itself
as fragment of claw
still digging at the spot
where it was abandoned
On my knees
in rusted pine needles
and copper leaves
I finger its smooth veneer
and puzzle what attack
separated it from its body
Above me the fragile limbs of aspens
sway in warm winds that suck
what’s left of hope
from bones of bent men
who walk alone in worn jackets
and muddy shoes,
we who wonder what will finally
hunt us down,
if any part of ourselves
will be scattered behind
to be found by those
who wander behind us
through desiccated debris
on autumn trails,
if our only legacy will be
what we have lived
and kept for our own
in a last moment of light104
A BREACH OF NATURE
I caught its flash
at the edge of vision –
not more than a flicker
of solid blue
in the aspens gold
and green –
too quick gone
to keep in focus
Might have been
a break in the clouds,
the dart of a bunting
through leaves
or a rip in the fabric
of the universe –
something blue
that terrified me,
a fleck of raw color
hidden inside the breeze 105
DRIFTWOOD
A large blanched sculpture torn
by wind from an injured tree
reaches with brown and twisted arms
from its resting place on the sand
to the sky
The raging surf will carry it away
to sink of its own weight,
bob on the floor of the sea
for colorful fish to sift
through its history
Over time it will be dismantled for
the museums of the deep
and in the memories of those who
stop and stand enchanted by
this tortured artifact of the past life106
THE MALICE OF SNOW
The snow arrived at the mountain peaks
overnight, stopped there,
melted by noon
Old timers called it a dusting,
the last of winter
By four in the fearsome afternoon
of the very same day
walls of snow slid into the valley
crushing meadows, pines and aspens,
cracked branches, penetrated rooftops,
tumbled into the valleys west of there
leaving four men mummified in drifts
State troopers blocked the highways
Wood burning stoves formed knuckles
of the low clouds into heavy fists
of fear
The furious snow moved relentlessly forward
until white took all
A rancher barricaded for days as a boy
in a smoky cabin behind spears of ice
hanging from the roof of his homestead
leans against a pine pole fence to look up
from time to time to the mountains
on bitter cold April mornings recollecting
the storm struck in late spring before
the summer he learned to break horses107
ORGANIC
Don’t worry –
I have washed my hands and chopped
today’s right-out-of-the-garden
vegetables and edible flower petals
on the wooden butcher block
per your detailed SOP
I have not snuck beef, chicken
or fish broth into the soup or
the dead flesh of any other animal
No additives, nitrites, MSG,
preservatives, sulfates,
or any other of that other junk
Strictly sea salt
I will only be serving made-from-scratch
multigrain legume and nut bread
Funny, I once skimmed
dust blown from a latrine
on the Cambodian Border
off the surface of brackish water
in my canteen cup,
and I’m still here!
As for that expensive sack of herbs,
supplements and bromides you swear by,
let it be known they have been
callously peddled since witchdoctors
mixed potions for the gullible
The old timers called them,
“Snake Oil”
Today they are labeled,
“Health Food”108
Don’t worry
Everybody’s going to die,
no matter what they finger,
ingest or inhale
It’s called the cycle of life109
MURDEROUS THOUGHTS
Bugs:
Cute in jars and cartoons,
precious to entomologists,
philosophers, poets
and Albert Schweitzer
Cunning the way a fly,
a mosquito,
darts out of nothingness
and scurries around
a hairy leg
Misfits of terrible beauty,
pandemic pain, they never
ask before they gorge –
blinding, fatal, to children
bathing by rivers,
sleeping on the ground
A plague to them all,
and poisons for rats
who chew on babies,
roaches in kitchens,
and the snails and slugs
who eat the flowers
of my little garden110
TIME ON EARTH
In matters of life and world, dark and light, time is messy,
wet with fog, with mist, the blur of morning and twilight
Clocks are cherished only in the skulls of men seeking
regularity in closed rooms
Outside, the click-clack of water sounds through underbrush,
cycles of day and night, bodily rhythms, runs on without notice
Raindrops strike ponds; leaves record the tick of sap; cheeks,
each fallen tear, without a stopwatch
I see the sky turn gold and red at random, drench farms,
withhold needed rain, how mortals flail and shrink and lapse
on whim without explanation
As witness to these events I join a gecko at dusk resting
from its battles for food, from conquests for mates,
curling and uncurling its long elegant tail on a chunk
of coral in the shade of palm fronds above the cemetery
of my rock garden
A sprinkler explodes in the thick bushes behind us
The lizard and I flinch together, exhale, collect ourselves
It lifts its sharp nose to catch the water’s fresh scent
I hear the tock of the end of day
It is the loneliness of my woman calling
from inside our house
The time is now111
AT THE GREAT DIVIDE
Fifty summers now, wanting fifty more,
half a century of life in his recorded history,
he rides alone with a half cup of warm beer
in the middle of July on a gondola
looking down over a dusty ski run,
no longer able to brag he has no fear of dying,
still aching for more thrill than earth can yield,
still quick to mock the lucky and the smug
daring to prove them wrong
Within his panoramic view the whole world
spreads between bald peaks:
a land barren of Indian tribes and buffalo,
flocks of birds once in the millions,
remnants of Spanish invaders, ruts of wagon trains;
before him horizons filling with strange forms
that soon will make his ideas obsolete and forgotten
Now that each day will be a found arrowhead,
a doubloon shining behind a stone,
deadly spiders and snakes hidden in the sage,
he stands outstretching his arms into wings
and watches his shadow swoop in silhouette
across the Continental Divide112
I CRY EASY NOW
Grandson, these tears you see would be
for the picnic by the lake that autumn
when we friends since childhood
fell in love at the same time
The air was cool but not yet cold,
empty and bright through the leaves
Scattered in couples, we stood kissing until
our teeth hurt, arms strung over our lover’s hips
Even at a distance from the others I could hear
the uncut laughter of our youth
You will not know about a day like that day
until you have come to a day
when those you have loved
have gone before you and you sit alone
crying to a boy about how alone you are
I cry easy now at the sounds
of redwings calling to their mates,
see the skin of our faces
tight and smooth as new melons,
the sharpened edges of our eyes
Grandson, we smoked and drank and laughed,
played gin rummy until sunrise
The next afternoon at Nina’s house
we cooked huevos rancheros, swigged tequila,
fell asleep on each others laps, woke in the dark
to the scent of rain through the screens,
tripping over arms and legs and tumbled chairs
I hear our confused voices in that early morning
passing in the hall in sandals between bedrooms,
scuffling so not to tumble off wooden front porch steps,
the farewells we mumbled easing each other
into vintage cars like the old do113
THE BROWN BAGGER
In the winter mornings before he woke the children,
reset the alarm another fifteen minutes for his wife to sleep,
he dressed quickly and hurried into the kitchen
to paste together a sandwich of peanut butter and jelly,
or bologna, butter and a cheese slice, grabbed an apple,
and filled a small container of cereal to snack,
before hurrying down the steep hill to the bus stop
for the trip downtown in the huddled silence
of strangers, hats pulled over their ears
In the twenty minutes he was granted to swallow his lunch
he watched the upper crust leave the office early, return late,
laughing, smelling of three martini meals in paneled taverns,
flinging off scarves and overcoats back onto racks, ruffling papers,
shouting orders, gathering for coffee and more chit-chat
He skipped the elevator for the stairs, marched up the dark street
to his little house, grabbed his tools and fixed a furnace register,
changed bulbs, sweated over bills, worried his children needed
fixing too but didn’t know how to make them right according to
his hopes for them at birth
He used the same sacks until they fell apart, until he could
heat some soup, grill toast and cheese, read the paper
at the kitchen table while his wife napped on the sofa,
after the kids disappeared to places in the National Geographic
he visited at the public library where the A/C was always on114
DAD IN THE DOCK
Arranging his hospital gown
to hide a black pubic flash,
he doesn’t seem to understand
the doctor’s indictment
For all the mayhem he’s wrought,
I want him safe from this cabal
of his children in a hurry,
shouting questions before he can
get his mouth to work into a reply:
“How bad? How long? Hospice, maybe?
Cost per day? Oxygen? Quality of life?”
When the final verdict’s read –
Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas –
they slap him on the shoulder, relieved,
file out of the consultation room,
each with an exhortation:
“Call 911 if you fall, Pop”
“Think living trust”
“Write notes to yourself”
“Don’t sign anything”
He’s always given them another shot,
be it bourbon or forgiveness
Now he wants one too:
just to be taken home,
sit by a window in his recliner,
daydream of being with Marie again
An incorrigible lover of con men and outlaws,
I pray not for his soul, but for him to beat this rap,
free to live another lifetime of insanity and sin
Even a condemned man is granted last words115
ON THE BACKS OF OLD MEN
A young nurse’s aide, I bathed them out of pans
of hot water, as hot as was allowed and more,
rubbed their fallen muscles with mint lotion,
slid my hands over melanomas black as char
They groaned in painful pleasure, maybe
the last pleasure they would ever have
The wings of their shoulders pointed skyward,
chests hanging flaccid like the breasts of women
towards the end of their days
I kneaded their necks and muscles on each side
of the spinal column where they had carried so much,
carefully helped them turn onto their backs, rested
their shrinking skulls into the white valleys of fresh pillows
They slowly rolled their heads to one side,
eyes closed, and smiled small
I liked to make believe they were daydreaming
a certain woman in a rose garden
for that one moment of their lives when
they were still in love with the whole world116
AFTER THE GREAT LIBERATIONShe was the mother whose onlylook at life before she marriedwas as a servant girl froma dairy farm and in her 70’sdiscovered sensuality in spicy novelscomplaining to her children,“Why didn’t anybody ever tell meabout this stuff?”Who on arrival during her first visitto a Caribbean island insistedon being driven to a nude beach,spent the afternoon wanderingin surprise and awethrough the unbound bodieslounging along the sandWho fell in love with the bottleand drank herself to deathfor lack of time to go backto the beginnings of her lifeknowing what she knew nowand who she might have beenswirling crazy and naked in the rain117
ATTIC FAN
It scratches against the itch and burn of the heat,
belt against blade, scratching one against the other,
against the sound of sleep, against the call of summer,
scratching against a small boy’s mind
in the call and wane of what he’s never understood,
of murderous mosquitoes, the sting of wetted baking soda
on what he’s scratched bloody,
of the questions, of the fears, of the hurts of the night,
of the pulse of tree frogs, of the bark of angry voices now silent,
of tree branches scratching dusty black screens,
filtering slight breezes, the scent of running rain,
the intermittent odor of dead rat in dried spirea,
of a garbage can full of chewed cobs and naked chicken bones,
of newly cut grass, of trees, of sewers, of the neighborhood,
of the exhaust of cars, his own sweat, his own fierceness,
of the sound of the fan going round and round
missing in regular irregularity, its chink-chink-chink
chopping at the humidity, stirring the fever of the night
in all that was human in him,
of the few sacred hours of humdrum space to the rote
of the old fan’s constant scratching and drumming,
circling again and again through night and just before morning,
when he could drift into dreams to the whir its wide slow blades,
of the worn belt of the fan’s motor of worn ball bearings,
the sounds of painful words already spoken, throat sounds,
gut sounds, sounds of mourned loss, of the heart’s drum,
of the struggle of a fan handmade with leftover parts,
its rotations vibrating between his ears, vibrating
within the wide skull of the world118
THE MAN IN THE WINDOW BY THE SEA
On my way to the ocean through the garden of a Caribbean hotel
I spotted him seated alone at a table framed in a large window
on the mezzanine level staring up at the cloudless sky as if
mesmerized by his first real grasp of blue
I tried to look away but the animal in him felt me looking up,
needing to be inside his thoughts, to be a character in his story
In the time it took to cross the courtyard through the tall palms
I imagined of him women, plots, frauds, schemes, wars, childhoods,
that might have taken him into such a stupor, a middle-aged man
in suit and tie on an island where such clothes were shed for shorts,
sandals, tank tops, where one could hear large exotic birds caged
in hotel lobbies squawking to be let go, the mix of disparate colors,
of people’s voices, the young and old of all nationalities and shapes,
mixing together in trade winds and sun and celebration
He glowered at me invading his blank expression, his face mangled
into a harsh scowl, a dog-like temple guardian effrontery with a fierceness made to warn away those who dared look too closely into his being, into the nakedness of his private panic and doubt, and I felt the sniper-red dot of his loathing centered on the back of my head as I hurried along the stone walkway leading to the beach into a panorama of froth and sand, couples laughing, kissing, tossing balls to each other, diving into the surf, running with kites, napping on towels as wide as carpets, straw hats flat over their faces, under wide multicolored umbrellas slanted for shade
I questioned: Which one of us is casual observer? Which one voyeur?
What offense had I committed? What threat created by my glance?
I shuffled over the boardwalk through the crowd and out of my flip-flops
for the cool feel of the fringe of the ocean bubbling across my feet,
leaving him and his glare behind the glass and dove into oblivion119
THE COMING OF THE FAR FOREST
The breeze brings the scent
of a distant wood in the flight
of white long-necked birds
homing across sunset
Before I step into its shadows
I want to know
how vast its hollows,
the depths of its caves
and twists of its trails,
if light strikes its treetops,
dapples wildflowers,
lichen, round stones,
if other creatures inhabit
its meadows and streams,
who whispered first
into its leaves
what’s whispered now
to me120
FIT FOR LIFE
Day of wrath! Day of mourning!
When the world dissolves in ashes!
– From the Burial Service For The Dead
On this hot desperate day
a man in a rumpled porkpie hat,
sweat soaked t-shirt and shorts
leans against the balustrade
of his wooden plank porch
breathing heavy, breathing shade,
squints back over the last fifty feet
where he nudged against humidity
with slumped shoulders,
more shuffling than running,
jabbing at air with arthritic fists
He swears to himself
he can outrace it,
knows he can,
said so in a magazine –
how he can outrace the moment
when a vessel in his brain
unravels like a yesterday:
When as a boy on the steps
of this same porch he waited
in fear and wonder for the blast
of the piercing town whistle
that silenced Main Street and
announced the sudden arrival
of high noon 121
THE OLD REPORTER
Now I know why he frantically pecked
the keys of his typewriter,
index finger by index finger;
why he typed alone
in a distant corner
on a deserted editorial floor
after the last edition
was put to bed;
notes on scraps of paper,
phone numbers on the backs
of business cards, files filled
with facts, photos,
scattered at his feet;
a side glance now and then,
a pause, a wince,
at street light glare
through the smudge
of crusted windows;
and why he pecked
faster and faster
for deadlines
he set for himself
to beat the morning sun122
LATE IN OCTOBER
Old friend, we’ve sat many nights on this worn
wooden swing under magisterial moons
arguing politics, history, philosophy, theology,
shouting, “Hippy! Terrorist! Fascist! Dictator!”
I see white crosses with floral wreaths in cemeteries,
gutted tanks, half legged young men with blank stares,
starving children, flies attacking their shrunken faces
You glorify the “rocket’s red glare,” complain of welfare
moms, spoiled brats, homos, lesbos, tattooed weirdos, coddled
addicts, rebellious protesters trashing stores and monuments
It is such a cool placid night with the stars at their best
For once, let’s just lean back in the breeze and listen
to the creaking of rusty chains
A solution may come to us, and if not,
we can sit here again tomorrow evening
in our rumpled windbreakers and imagine
a world that might have been 123
THE SILENCED
For those who once walked among us
we must speak words never again spoken,
words muffled by thick palms
of henchmen in dark chambers
where everything seen and heard
becomes so vast, so complex
within the confines of the human heart
there are no words to describe what
they have seen and heard and thought;
must speak out for them, the disappeared,
shoved unseen whirling out of cargo planes
over oceans made invisible by sleet and clouds;
those drugged, gagged and shackled in prisons,
to concrete walls in mountain caves
of forever gone where words do not echo;
repeat the stories of the missing, beaten numb
and slammed bloody against stone walls,
kicked and dragged through back alleys,
tortured and emptied of what they have seen,
heard and suffered under cover of night,
the stories of those exiled into an eternity
of never been by juntas guarded by muscled men
in fortified villas and luxury penthouses
deaf to the words and screams of those
never again to speak, those silenced, buried
forever in the wordless tomes of the sea124
THE SEARCH FOR A PEACEFUL LIFE
Grandfather, I come in the middle of life
to your birthplace in the land of the Hun
Even as the bus curves through the mountains,
brakes downward towards your village
and crosses the bridge over the twisting river,
I begin to feel the anger of the dispossessed
I have heard how you stabled your ox and mule
on the mud floor of your drafty house,
how Kaiser Bill marched his soldiers
over the hills to claim your fields,
how you refused to be his conscript and fled
to the Statue of Liberty, how you fed
your young family driving a tea wagon,
how the men outside the tavern in your new home
mocked you for your poor and halting English,
laughed you into a two-day drunk
At 84, you simply smoked and smiled
and said nothing more to me than “grandson”
Grandfather, I only knew you when I was a child
II
Grandfather, since my first memory, I have been at war
When a hand reached down out of the sky,
lifted and dropped me into a real war,
I crawled on the jungle floor with my wrath,
waging a war against war and the makers of war
I brought the war back with me and fought for the peace
because you had drawn the battle lines long before
I knew anything about your own warmongers
All I could say to the mothers of the dead was,
“I am sorry – I am one of those who lived”
My war against war led me from one struggle to another
Whom did I struggle against, for what and why?
Was I fighting your war again, and on what battleground?
Grandfather, I keep hearing there will be no more wars,
at least not for a generation, not until new skin
replaces old, not until rain washes blood from stone
I keep firing into the darkness, my chin on the stock125
III
Grandfather, when I dream, I dream of windstorms,
the sudden swift scattering of leaf, brick and bone
Your son, my father, came spinning into your adopted land
protesting, fists doubled, his night howls so piercing
your neighbors turned on their lights
I never knew when his words or broadsides
would sweep out of nowhere to strike me down
He scattered his children and his days and his convictions
so wildly, I was almost forty-odd before I hit the ground
I tumbled through battered evenings, mornings at school when
my stomach sank in fear, my thoughts battered by terror
I waited for Kaiser Bill to come and burn my house
I could feel his soldiers outside my door, the assassins,
probing the perimeter, testing for a weakness
Even now, I fortify myself against disaster
Grandfather, no one knows when the next storm will
thunder down from the hills, when the next army will strike
IV
Grandfather, I wake early and go walking
I search for that moment when the light first appears
I walk in those seconds of first light knowing the peace
that rises from the scent of the earth, peace no man can steal
Some mornings the valleys swallow me in fog
Not until I reappear on the crest of the last hill,
not until I move up into the glow of the full light of dawn
do I know for certain that I have not disappeared forever
On one of those mornings, lost in a fog,
I climbed by chance into the swirl of a thunderstorm
I panicked in the lightning and raw rain
Halfway into the core of the storm I might have outrun it,
but I turned into it, leaping and laughing,
until I wondered why I had battled the sky for so long
Grandfather, on the morning I made peace with the rain,
I laughed and cried at the smallest of things126
V
Grandfather, in your country the spruces spring into the air
in patterns of majestic lace, the patterns of my dreams
Waterfalls spill from the sides of the steep green hills
into rivers and streams that disappear into ghostly lakes
Wild boars trample the underbrush as did the unicorn
in the great, deep forests of my ancestral myths
I see the old men with their walking sticks along the road
and I know this is where you were meant to be, why
you sat tightlipped and fuming for those many years
in a cheap wooden bungalow in someone else’s country
Your birthright and your heritage have been erased
by too many wars, too many winters
Seeing the cattle on the hillsides and the upright grain,
I feel as you felt looking out at the river churning
under the bridge in the middle of your village
Standing here in this immense valley, you saw
what the river was, that it could both bring
and carry away a part of you dream by dream
I see you in your youth, mustache as fine as newly
sprouted grass, your lederhosen stiff against your legs,
how you looked up at the mountains for the army
of occupation to fire their cannons at those you loved
I feel the anger and sadness you felt then, your vow
never to be enslaved, to live and speak as a free man
Grandfather, I know a little about what has been lost
I stand where you stood; I stand by a terrible rushing river127
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED POEMS
From The Eyes Of The Ghost, BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1986:
“A Brief Analysis Of The Situation”
“In The Reign Of Our Terror”
“Tough Love”
From Promises In The Dust, BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1995:
“The Pigeons Of Chernoble”
“Leather Jackets”
“Lion Tamers”
“American Dauchau”
From Trajectory Journal, Issue 21:
“Bobby Kennedy Has Been Shot”
From Coal City Review, University of Kansas, 2024
“The Search For A Peaceful Life” 128
A SHORT HISTORY OF MYSELF
I am the author of five books of poetry, including The Dragon Box (Coal City Press), Pear Season and The Boy Who Ate Dandelions (The Mid-America Press), Promises In The Dust (BkMk Press) and Last Lambs: New and Selected Poems of Vietnam, Second Edition (BkMk Press), a 2014 Eric Hoffer Legacy Award finalist. I am also a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of the BKMK Missouri Poets Contest for my first book The Eye of The Ghost. My poem, “In The Morning In Missouri,” was chosen by The Kansas City Star as Missouri’s official state poem. My poems also appear in a number of reviews and anthologies.
I was born in 1944 in Kansas City, Missouri, No. 3 in a family of ten children. I left home at the age of 16 to escape my mentally ill father. I supported myself with money I squirreled away over several years from a variety of odd jobs, a half-time scholarship from Rockhurst College, as a copy boy and aspiring journalist on the editorial floor of the Kansas City Times and as a psychiatric aide at two area hospitals.
I earned a B.A. in English Literature with an ongoing interest in philosophy and psychology. I returned for a fifth year at Rockhurst to apply for graduate school to research my personal hypothesis of the brain as the primary cause of mental illness. As a result of that fifth year I was drafted. Hoping to continue my academic career I joined the 69th Infantry Brigade of the Kansas National Guard and served in the race riots of 1968. Later that year my unit was nationalized and I was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam at Tay Ninh along the Cambodian Border and then ordered to write daily reports in the office of the commanding general in Cu Chi. For my service in Vietnam I was awarded a Bronze Star.
On my return to the States I found work as a special risks underwriter for a reinsurance company that had a department offering libel and slander insurance for the media. In 1979 at the request of a disgruntled risk manager for a large media company I founded Media/Professional Insurance (MPI), an international underwriting and claim management firm defending the First Amendment rights of the media. MPI developed The Media Special Perils Policy covering claims arising out of the content 129
of publishing and broadcasting. We were involved as the insurer representative in some of the most significant First Amendment cases of the 1980’s and ‘90’s. My media attorney partner and I sold the company in 1992 due to the arrival of the internet and the conglomeration of media companies by investment bankers who had little interest or respect for First Amendment issues.
The poems in this book have come to me from childhood, from running up and down Wall Street, the world’s complex reinsurance and financial markets, across this complicated country, following my wife, Kathy, an Episcopal priest, in her ministries in the Caribbean, Colorado and Hawaii and the injustices I have experienced in my own life and continue to witness along the way. 130