This Ancient Land

The sky emits strawberry milkshake
Melting over distant mountain tops

Revealed in silhouette

They plant firm and deep
Like viking linemen
Who forgot the signal
34 57 29 Hut!
But planted, they remain
To the rush around them

The shoulders hunch
Shake a bit
As the wind
Elder to the ancient
Barely gives notice

In this new dawn of light
His tuft of trees
Like hair
-no, feathers
In a warriors
headdress
Prove his heart yet beats
Above anchored legs

Beyond and higher
His father stands
Like a heart-shot moon
The frozen white
Heavy on his brows
And it is here
Wind and age make love
Spawning the prophecy
Of death

Below, and
As children in daycare,
The earth plays wild, while
Snow flies fresh and silly
Like a pillow fight gone bad

And the pines stretch,
A million tiny erections
In search of a moist womb

The mesas beyond,
crouch low and grumpy
playing drill Sergeant
To the sands below
While sage protest to cactus
We have rights, too!

This land has stood
Long before the language
That defines it
But sorrow shakes
In lost translation

Where once great bears
And the hungry she wolf
Vied and grappled
In the way of now
The rising mist reveals
Fences and telephone poles
In vile trespass

Where once the Apache brave
Chased a wild stallion
Whose neck fumed
The thunder of freedom
Men in blaze neon
Gather the litter of spoil

What was before
Shall be again
And again and again and again
Til the Elder wind stands still
In surrender
And spreads her skirts
Over a place, a way

Devoured in a taming
It was helpless to stop

The Passionate Soldier

ever watch "Band Of Brothers"?
World War II

men who fought for a cause
for each other
and for us

they would get shot
then bust out of hospitals to race back and freeze and bleed some more because they were passionate.

Vietnam was different
one and done.
survive 365 days and get the hell out with as much blood and limbs as you had on day one.
-then never look back.
and never get to know the guy next to you as it might get you killed.
the James Bond approach-never make it personal

MacArthur knew this.
he led his men to an island, then when things got rough, he flew away
saying
"I shall return"
and while they all fought and died, he drank chardonnay from moonlit balconies.
but return he did, to the bleach bones and empty shells
cuz, well, a promise is a promise.

is the passionate soldier more hero than the day and limb counter?
seems to me, dead is dead.
and those that lived won't tell you.

maybe this is life
and love
maybe there's an in between
I know I despise MacArthur
but Bill should've never risked his own leg to save Joe Torre who wouldn't have even been hit
had he stayed in the hospital.

I watched "Pacific" too
John got lucky
got the medal of honor
all his limbs
and the girl
parades too and magazine covers
he won it all
then
just before discharge
he signed again
boom!
dead

no girl
no kids
no grand kids
and no difference to the battle
he took his life and a hundred future lives for the murmur of passion

I've never been to war
and I wonder who I am
I don't want to be MacArthur
I want to know the guy in my bunker
but I want my legs

my son is joining the marines
who do i want him to be?
I think
at some point in our lives
we're all going to find out
and then
never talk about it

ain't that the way?

The Book

In my mind

I write a book



in a language pre-Mesopotamia

in a language

post apocalyptic

but the context

all twentieth century fox

The stars-Gates, Einstein, Ford & bell

I paddle still waters

before Plato weaned a thought

I lie upon empty shores

long after the last bomb has fallen

and the red has run deep to the earth

and I know

yes, I know

that the beginning

and end

must be tied, in the middle

DETONATOR!

the last equation

must be solved

the last thought

-provoked



and then, quiet

as before



but first

and now

i write a book

in my mind



I call it

Noise

an epic

fer sure

Papa's Hands

"Papa! Suppers on. Come in now."
though her voice was more clarinet
it carried like the bass drum
in a bad parade
comin down the gravel drive


and Papa would come in
always has, always will
it was the way

hearing the words, and
the screen door slam
he gave the wrench one final turn
before grunting without thought
"i'll be there"

but no one heard him
other than his lame cow
broken tractor
and three legged barn cat

still
he said it
as he had for a thousand years

his hands of blood and grease
were giant clams rotting
on forgotten beaches and
he paused to look at them

turned them

pushed one onto a nail
tongue wagging a  sleeping beam

nothing

he back handed the lazy beam
while the cat blinked
in wonderment
from the bale of dusty hay

nothing

he studied the great nothing
and silently wondered
when it all had taken place

had he never been a child?
had his hands always been
just a tools extension?
his face, a post Halloween pumpkin
snickered a smile
but sometimes
A smile, isn't a smile at all

The screen door creaked
as if with rheumatism
"Papa! did you hear me? suppers on!"
the bass turned into tuba

he heard her, every day
for a thousand years
and the door slammed
in perfect rhythm
to her "landsakes!"
and shaking head

walking to the window
painted heavy in dust,
he thought to wipe it clean
but clearer vision
can be bitter medicine, and
he gazed appropriately
through the history it preached

thirty yards away
under the guardian oak
rested the frozen titanic
of a captain's dream

his first new tractor-
unsinkable, the salesman had said
when the papers were scratched

but there'd been five since
and six looked as sure
as the crow's caw
from the broken gutter


he wondered how it got there
why it stayed there
a constant reminder

-of her last day
a thousand years ago
when her piston struck the iceberg
and listed to starboard
but couldn't remember

if a picture paints a thousand words
rust paints but one

"Papa!!! I swear, I'm not agonna call you again. You hear me Papa? The potatas gonna be cold!"
Slam

his eyes lowered as he smiled
but a smile isn't always a smile

the cow bellered mama's echo
which echoed a thousand church bells
echoing a thousand funerals
in a thousand town

shufflin to the stricken cow
he felt a deep burning urge
to punch the cow
and rattle her ribs good
but instead
stroked her neck as
the cat hopped over
to brush his ratty overalls

drawing back his foot to kick her away
he instead reached down
and scritched her head
with his work swollen fingers
as tenderly as a princess
strokes a flower

looking about the barn
as a u-boat captain
searches for targets
he saw only his life
in rusty nails and time-split wood

pulling the worn hanky from
his dusty overalls
he wiped his face and
turned toward the door

"comin Mama"
he sniffed and smiled

and sometimes a smile
really is a smile
and sometimes a thousand years
passes far too quickly

She Took Me With Her

I wrote this piece several months ago, after a very special time with a very special friend




When she went, last night,
She threw closed a
Thousand doors and
And a phone lay crushed on the floor

It was a fire, big and wild
Of another's wood
That scorched, not warmed
And only a river of tears
Might put it to shame

She hushed me quiet
As she opened her window,
That i might see
A clenched passage

Unavoidable

We didn't speak
Or hold hands as
She guided me
To where her innocense
Had been sacrificed anew

In her hands of a child
She carried a sack of burnt offerings

I watched as they squirmed
And writhed to escape
Or perhaps, fight escape of
A resolve they underestimated

As silently I shadowed
And her child's fingers fisted,
The sun withdrew knowing
It had no place here

She sat me on a bench
And looked away as
She settled beside
My torn shell of helplessness

Then it began,
Just a tear, then a stream
Finally a river
As one by one
The bag was emptied.
She cried too

Purge,
First a history
That should never
Have been written,
Then a guilt, mindless
Of compassion

Next,
A horde of miscreants
Masquerading as love

Brothers, so called
That might have sheltered
But instead hid beneath her,
And a sister that might have loved
If only she knew how

Efforts,
To fix, explain-conceal
Music
That fell just one note short
Of true healing
And two wine glasses
That lied about forget

And finally,
Mothers
That never were
And weak, foolish fathers
Who never could be

And when at last

the bag was empty,
Swept away
In the dirty flood,
Then she took my hand

And it was no longer
A child's frightened squeeze
But rather the tender hold
Of a beautiful woman
Who would no longer

Carry other people's trash

To the curb

Then close, she let me draw her

as I kissed away her tears,

And her sweet face

Found my shoulder.

She let me hold her

Having learned her hurt

And she taught me love, again

The way it should be.

And when

There was no more to do

No more to cry

No reason to linger

-She let me walk her home

I liked that she took me

I like that we held

I like that love still lived

In a home of broken windows

And dirty linen

Where rats rule the cupboard

But I hate that her heart had to shatter

Once more

As purchase for me to learn

That her love is unbreakable

Fires

there are fires that smoulder
in the recesses of my passion
where a little kindle goes far

a walk moulded in stride
just three steps ahead
a smile in a silent hallway
and the way her hair curls
behind her ear
spark Dante sunsets

the smell of another's
Sunday grill, as a screen door slams
her comb, layed upon the dresser
where the sunlight catches
each strand
and grass freshly cut
pasted to my sneaker
are the damper wide open
in December's hearth

the sounds
of a lake shore lapping the sand
in glitter moonlight
while children giggle
the distant shore

a church bell across town
sweeping the empty streets
and the swish of snowshoes
on snow
too virgin for sleds
are the driftwood burn
that glow the trees
into nameless shadows

these fires
do more than remember,
more than warm
they garner yesterdays
into gifts for tomorrow

Where I Am

somewhere, among the ruins
I lost myself while questing
for my missing pieces

guides, they were too many
and friends too silent
while lovers built tomorrow
over me
city to city,
with their foundations
hidden in my mud

so I drifted
in a pensive loll

as worlds gathered about me
and ships traded ware
i rolled
to the withered clock

funny, bout the stars
which borrow light
to magnify the darkness
they dwell in

the wind gallops past
brushing the Appalachians
like a lovers bangs

some of me is there

a sapling shivers
neath the towering redwood
a bit of me there too

high on a barren ridge
where nameless stones
hold silent mass
the Dall sheep watch
the banner of snow
streak from a peak never claimed
and I am the breath expelled

but I'm also
the dust in closet nooks
and the letter
never opened
in a box well hidden

these I can't retrieve
and they keep me
from knowing the others
I miss so dearly