A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

A beer can, phone book, a grapefruit
and an Advent wreath
with four candles
in its nest of greens
Two weeks
Two lit
Third one's the Pink
a life three quarters spent?

Next weekend
Saturday-- The Sabbath
falls in Hanukkah

“Blessed art thou, Lord our God
King of the universe
who dost create lights of fire...”

I'll light that third-- the pink one
like a barbarian wise woman
who traveled too far along life's way
to find a Jewish baby, wrapped in rags

...or, was it the old guy that night
lying in the street
outside a New England bar

“Oh Christ! Ya gotta be kidding me!”

Nope, He was there alright

Wallowing in the freezing slush
amid his helpless drunken cries
No cell phones then
Scrapped my pizza plans

On foot alone
waving in frustration  
in the passing headlights
a turquoise, wind-crazed scarecrow
_

“Someone's gotta stop?
Someone has to help us, don't they?”
_

Now there are two beer cans
a grapefruit, and a phone book
beside the advent wreath

Third candle lit and leaning out
for hope along the way

The bin lorry had been.
I picked up a fragment
of our neighbours lives,
litter they must have scrapped.

We do not know them.
They're always moving on.
Urban Bedouin,
with a thousand and one
domestic tales untold.

three day rain, odd to
see the flooded plains
in place of prairie choked
and lit; brightening night.
chilled wind stirs humid
days, sun foresought.
forced to sleep a
few days more.  and:
'i never see the
devil, but i do
see demons.'
stated as people walk the
spring streets covered to
cease rain from drenching.
refusing natural occurence.

The big seven vessels,
Whom struck fear within their foes,
Scrapped without notice

~ Umi

these western leftist,
make us former commies...
look... really really
******* bad...

        my grandfather,
who was abandoned by his
father, spewed by the lies
of his father's brother,
found some stability
in the communist party...

sometimes did jury duty...
the communist party
gave him a house... etc. etc.,
but this, "thing" in the west?
the dissonance conundrum
of creating a collective hive?

it doesn't, and it will never work...
i already said this,
but i'll say it again...
communism does work...
but in only one instance...
post-war countries,
esp. given the plight of
Syria...
                
           it's a transitory period...
so the Syrian baker
can trust the ******* Syrian
taxi cab driver, once again...
communism is not a failure
in that it's applied as
a fail-safe concept,
a rebuilding mechanism,
  
like Poland... 1945...
through to circa 1990...
    it worked...
  **** it worked...
  eastern Europe didn't
receive funds from the American
Marshall Plan...

but Sweden and Switzerland
did...
   i thought they were neutral
countries in the conflict?

communism is a failure if its not
considered a recovery economy,
or rather:
    there's no or other at this point...

in post-war scenarios,
it's the only egalitarianism that works
in the short-end...
this is not English style of
egalitarian idealism...
   (a term i borrow from German
idealism of Kant)...
            no... the English don't know
that their egalitarian idealism
doesn't work...
it's too soft...
the war was harsh...
you're not going to rebuild
the same civic plateau with capitalism,
of a country that was either:
invaded by a foreign power,
or imploded into chaos via
a breach of ethnic-civility...

you can't rebuild Syria with
foreign intervention...
communism is far from a failure
of ideology...
   it was always supposed
to instigate a transitional
period, a post-scriptum...
   a communism can exist,
successfully, for... roughly 50 years...
once the tragedy passes...

and then the free markets can
take over, capitalism can have its
"stage fright", or rather its
wild west...
            but not before the circa 50
years are over...
  a Syrian baker,
   must begin a civil dialectic with
a Syrian taxi driver...
no amount of foreign intervention
will solve the problem...

it's not like you can reuse
the rubble to rebuild the same houses...
sure... the darkest hour
in Poland under communism was
when martial law (stan wojenny)
was implemented by
Wojciech Jaruzelski
(Roy Orbison, no, really,
Roy Orbison)...
food-stamps, long queues at supermarkets
rationing... only white vinegar on
the shelves of supermarkets...
the whole presupposition of war
against the Soviets,
  counter measures to
      avoid the instances of
the Hungarian / Czechoslovakian
occupation / suppression...
   the Parisian spirit of '68...
every time i look into your loving eyes,
one look, from you,
  i drift... away!
    i pray, that you, are here, to stay!
anything you want, you got it...
anything you need, you got it...
anything at all, you got it...
   bay.................................. be!

western Europe received pittance
pay-checks from H'america...
eastern Europe received the hard graft of
communism...
             and it worked...
because it was supposed to work
for the 50 or so years that it did work...
when it stopped working...
my home town lost roughly 20K
   metalwork jobs...
  the metalwork factory was scrapped,
cut up, sold to foreign investors...
Celsa? i believe that's a Spanish company...

some people grew old, retired,
some went on the dole,
some became homeless,
some migrated to other parts of the country,
otherwise took the bold route
and emigrated to other parts of
Europe and the world...
a town dies, the people disperse
if in a dispersing worthy age...

     but i turn on the tube...
and listen to all these leftist lunatics,
and i'm like...          what?!
communism works,
   it works, in exceptional circumstances,
and like i said, before an equal
footing competition market resurfaces,
you're getting ****...
             this is not to suggest that
communism is at odds with capitalism...
apparently... it never was!

         but... you can't rebuild
Syria with capitalism...
  first you have to return to a commonly
shared civility, a counter to what
already exists in the English egalitarian idealism...
best represented as:

a 200m race at the Olympics...
all the competitors walk an equal
pace for 100m...
        and the next 100m?
they do their sprint, they compete!
but not until communism creates
a basis for a mutual trust of civility
between a Syrian baker,
and a Syrian taxi driver...

      capitalism and outright
competition will never solve the problem...
because outright competition
creates nothing more than
an dystopian: post-apocalyptic
mad max: fury road endless cycle of
recurring opportunists...

scavengers...
                      it works... in periods of
roughly 50 years...
what... and capitalism isn't prone
to its own timescales of economic crashes?!
see...
             even capitalism has hiccups...
but like i said:
    communism works...
for time periods, post-scriptum of
the damaging events...
                        under exceptional circumstances
of it being necessarily implemented...
like world war II... the Syrian civil war;
and only then!

****... my grandfather and all the other
school children, actually cried
when news hit the country about Stalin's death...
i have access to an actual ****** source,
what do you have?
  a target of ridicule,
        donning a che guevara t-shirt
who still hasn't rid himself of acne?

Essenntial love
Essential loveAugustus said I found Rome brick I left it marbleI find myself vile only through loving Jesus can I be righteous
What happened there was a time I encountered angels read his word ate what I read with a physical sensation I could feel in my
Heart just like I feel when I eat naturally somehow I flipped back to the way I was before these wonders were real I told before
How the love of God as a spear flew off of the record turn table from that moment at seventeen with a lapse of years from
Five to seventeen I lost a holy life because my parents turned from God went back in the world taking me and my sister with them
This is what the spirit said about my parents when he gave me a promise I also told I hitchhiked to camp slept with the cows in
A pasture a hill over from the main camp site this troubled the Illinois district superintendent but God spoke through the camp
Speaker this is what God has to say to someone to identify he said this and when he said it my aunt and uncle setting across the
Auditorium turned and looked directly at me you’re here your mother is a harlot and your dad is a drunkard a month later a
Camp speaker made the same promise but with this stipulation you can change the hands on the clock but you can’t change the
Time that has been forty one years ago it is still true God is not a liar but after the record player I did start back to church all
The time I would seek God to be filled with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking with other tongues no success and then I
Was drafted far from home discouraged I quit going to church this went on for the two years God remained silent humanist try
To tell you can improve all by yourself see if this sounds like improvement one who tried to live right now grass and alcohol was my
Lifestyle if you asked me about it this is what you would have heard Wolfman Jack was our hero for sure when he was forced to
Broadcast from Mexico after violating FCC rules as a DJ and he never sounded as good as when you were high the alcohol altered
My mental state I could think deep brooding thoughts only problem you couldn’t be around me because of self loathing I was like a
Mad bull I was destructive and self destructive that came from self loathing I knew my parents record I got in enough trouble
drinking twelve percent by volume slow gin I can’t stand the taste so I would force it down you drink a whole bottle of anything its
Lights out well it like the lost weekend I came back own leave with grass and alcohol I was a disgusting freak to kids I use to lead on
Jefferson St I found out at a get together at the park that I was the cause for one of them getting drunk the first time there no shame
Like that well except for this there was more but I will just give you the high lights it was night we were all in the barracks I was in the
Latrine standing there doing what boys do well I was holding onto this board up over my head inch wide it was nailed at about four
Feet intervals to these poles behind them was corrugated metal making the wall well I wondered what happened if I yanked on
The board nothing happened except it came off with a terrible crack again no big but is was a big thing to thirty bunk mates
I heard a commotion so I just looked around the door all of them were scared straight or something because they were all trying
To get out of the door at the same time that’s funny when Archie Bunker and Mike did it on all in the family but they thought
They were next on the list I got them calmed down I feel I made up for it when I stood up for them I called a bully outside to fight
That was making every bodie’s lives miserable just like all bullies he was a coward and ended up throwing his arms around my shoulder
Wanted to be my friend I know he was a coward because as I said before I are one next one more dangerous not for whom you would
Think I sent the Sarge to go to the NCO club and get me a bottle of slow gin they had a quart not a fifth but it was without the volume
I took care of the volume and the day room with it one hundred and twenty proof in the middle of this I called one of the saints back
Here well I can’t tell you much but the saint talked to me when I did come home I believe when I hung up the phone thats when the bull
Rang in anyway a Jewish kid was said to have run down the company street screaming a wild man was tearing up the day room it was
Made out of aluminum siding and I only drank half of the bottle if I had drank all of it I would have torn it down not up well trouble
Breeds trouble one guy was write one was wrong well that weaved in and out just like myself I came to myself and in front of me was
My pal from class that I was in Jose Torres an MP sorry but one of the ugliest Mexicans anywhere not just in California but he was
Fired up with that Latino blood he wanted to fight evidenced by the forty five he was waving in my face in that brief moment of
Knowing what was going on I reverted to the primal beast level if you get in a fight you become intensely aware nothing is hidden
I could see it in his eyes he could taste it he wanted to pistol whip me oh contraire my friend I was fifteen and me and two other kids
Were watching tables for the refinery pick nick the next day well six idiots show up drunk drinking beer that was alright but when
Duck tale white under shirt jeans engineer boots stooge started throwing beer on my friend’s dads navy sleeping bag I asked him to
Stop when he didn’t I stood up holding a cow boy belt with a raised horse head on the buckle in my hand for protection well bright one
****** it out of my hand and slapped me in the face with it remember I said bull he was two years older than me but I was big and all
Muscle then I threw my head back and when the blood rose through my eyes I was blind it didn’t matter is was black in the large
Pavilion I couldn’t see only red just before that I was in danger I have seen what a pack of hounds can do to a **** on the ground
I was the **** all were getting ready to rush in but when my blood hit my brain the volcano erupted on his sorry self I picked him up off
The floor then he needed protection God was there if he would have gone down on the cement floor or into the picnic table how they
Are made his back would have been broken but I threw him across the table two feet to the table over the table another four feet
Into a red fence that was stretched there one pole to the next he was going head first about four feet off the ground that fence
scrapped the floor then when it got to the two points those bolts snapped it sounded like a high powered rifle going off he and the
Fence continued two to three feet off the edge of the floor then three feet out in the grass where it folded up around him the fight
Was Over the others wouldn’t even acknowledge him lying out there groaning the fence had become his safety net the next day the
Dad who owned the sleeping bag looked at the two of us and asked what happened to you two I couldn’t see my face but he had three
Deep imprints of the fence stakes plus the twisted wire was plainly visible the marks were up and down you can say they lasted a while
so I looked at this pistol waving clown and just laughed turned and walked down to the MP station I did thirty days clerking in the
Headquarters office for rearranging the day room to the way I wanted it messing with the army is Childs play then God came on the
Scene not so fun I experienced the same thing that happened to a guy that I worked with at the refinery when I knew him he was
An old man I was seventeen but later when he was dying of cancer his neighbor who was in our church set with him and as she did she
Prayed for him until God spoke to her and said don’t pray anymore he rejected me when he was young now I’m rejecting him the story
Behind this was this man was driving a truck back then they had to go out and literally pull him out of the cab his hands were like claws
His nerves were gone that’s what happened to me the only reason I didn’t use lsd was the kid used it all and then the angel had to step
In before salvation came again I was unaware of this but I went to the fire house I set down at the desk next to this other kid and he
kept smiling finally I had enough I asked what’s so funny you don’t remember no remember what last night you ran in and stood at the
Top of the steps six seven feet up out of the office I ran in said the MPS didn’t catch me I then hollered I’m superman and I did a flip
Down on the cement floor I did remember laying on the floor hollering at the fire chief as he slept in the back room off of the office he
Finally told someone to take me back to the barracks so stupidity was running rampant but I was the crew chief and I did my job
And then it happened just like my friend in the truck that had to be pulled out I lost it I was a basket case I couldn’t think straight
Minor jobs that were simple overwhelmed me when that starts you start looking for answers it didn’t take me long to know what was
Going on this rebels running from God had come to a screeching halt I finally had the boys take me to Monterey and let me out I threw
Away the cigarettes checked into a motel a few blocks from the church had to literally cry for God to let me have peace so that I could
Sleep and in the morning dressed went to church as I walked by the windows I heard the congregation singing the songs of Zion a
precious peace settled over me I was home where I belonged.

This is long and serves as a starting point that I want to continue up to Christ’s day of Christmas if it doesn’t work out least you know
my testimony and you can see what God has done for me but I want to try and renew my life and maybe touch you along the way

I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to feel the impact of your absence
To see that you were taken by a substance
I'm sorry I was never there
Not once to wash away your fears
Nor tuck you in at night
Take away the fright
But the death I found lying sweetly in your eyes
Dug craters in my skin cells
Soft and precious little dents

I had to clean the blood away
Couldn't stand to see you there
So I scrapped and scrubbed
Until the thought of you had passed
But in this role, I was sickeningly miscast
And nothing could have stopped you
Not a single plead nor shriek
You left as fast as you had come
Without a cry nor squeak
And I could swear I saw you in the mirror
Walking hand in hand with death
But you did not look behind you
Not even at your ****

I'm sorry I didn't make it to the funeral
And I'm sorry I barely cried
I'm sorry that I let your sister see you while you died
I'm sorry that I blame you for my suffering
And that I'm still recovering

But most importantly
I'm sorry that I didn't save you
I'm sorry that it was too late
And I'm sorry I couldn't save you from the pain that drove you to your fate
That I couldn't take away your misery
Couldn't take away the evil
That you had to look for happiness inside a little needle

Essenntial love
Essential loveAugustus said I found Rome brick I left it marbleI find myself vile only through loving Jesus can I be righteous
What happened there was a time I encountered angels read his word ate what I read with a physical sensation I could feel in my
Heart just like I feel when I eat naturally somehow I flipped back to the way I was before these wonders were real I told before
How the love of God as a spear flew off of the record turn table from that moment at seventeen with a lapse of years from
Five to seventeen I lost a holy life because my parents turned from God went back in the world taking me and my sister with them
This is what the spirit said about my parents when he gave me a promise I also told I hitchhiked to camp slept with the cows in
A pasture a hill over from the main camp site this troubled the Illinois district superintendent but God spoke through the camp
Speaker this is what God has to say to someone to identify he said this and when he said it my aunt and uncle setting across the
Auditorium turned and looked directly at me you’re here your mother is a harlot and your dad is a drunkard a month later a
Camp speaker made the same promise but with this stipulation you can change the hands on the clock but you can’t change the
Time that has been forty one years ago it is still true God is not a liar but after the record player I did start back to church all
The time I would seek God to be filled with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking with other tongues no success and then I
Was drafted far from home discouraged I quit going to church this went on for the two years God remained silent humanist try
To tell you can improve all by yourself see if this sounds like improvement one who tried to live right now grass and alcohol was my
Lifestyle if you asked me about it this is what you would have heard Wolfman Jack was our hero for sure when he was forced to
Broadcast from Mexico after violating FCC rules as a DJ and he never sounded as good as when you were high the alcohol altered
My mental state I could think deep brooding thoughts only problem you couldn’t be around me because of self loathing I was like a
Mad bull I was destructive and self destructive that came from self loathing I knew my parents record I got in enough trouble
drinking twelve percent by volume slow gin I can’t stand the taste so I would force it down you drink a whole bottle of anything its
Lights out well it like the lost weekend I came back own leave with grass and alcohol I was a disgusting freak to kids I use to lead on
Jefferson St I found out at a get together at the park that I was the cause for one of them getting drunk the first time there no shame
Like that well except for this there was more but I will just give you the high lights it was night we were all in the barracks I was in the
Latrine standing there doing what boys do well I was holding onto this board up over my head inch wide it was nailed at about four
Feet intervals to these poles behind them was corrugated metal making the wall well I wondered what happened if I yanked on
The board nothing happened except it came off with a terrible crack again no big but is was a big thing to thirty bunk mates
I heard a commotion so I just looked around the door all of them were scared straight or something because they were all trying
To get out of the door at the same time that’s funny when Archie Bunker and Mike did it on all in the family but they thought
They were next on the list I got them calmed down I feel I made up for it when I stood up for them I called a bully outside to fight
That was making every bodie’s lives miserable just like all bullies he was a coward and ended up throwing his arms around my shoulder
Wanted to be my friend I know he was a coward because as I said before I are one next one more dangerous not for whom you would
Think I sent the Sarge to go to the NCO club and get me a bottle of slow gin they had a quart not a fifth but it was without the volume
I took care of the volume and the day room with it one hundred and twenty proof in the middle of this I called one of the saints back
Here well I can’t tell you much but the saint talked to me when I did come home I believe when I hung up the phone thats when the bull
Rang in anyway a Jewish kid was said to have run down the company street screaming a wild man was tearing up the day room it was
Made out of aluminum siding and I only drank half of the bottle if I had drank all of it I would have torn it down not up well trouble
Breeds trouble one guy was write one was wrong well that weaved in and out just like myself I came to myself and in front of me was
My pal from class that I was in Jose Torres an MP sorry but one of the ugliest Mexicans anywhere not just in California but he was
Fired up with that Latino blood he wanted to fight evidenced by the forty five he was waving in my face in that brief moment of
Knowing what was going on I reverted to the primal beast level if you get in a fight you become intensely aware nothing is hidden
I could see it in his eyes he could taste it he wanted to pistol whip me oh contraire my friend I was fifteen and me and two other kids
Were watching tables for the refinery pick nick the next day well six idiots show up drunk drinking beer that was alright but when
Duck tale white under shirt jeans engineer boots stooge started throwing beer on my friend’s dads navy sleeping bag I asked him to
Stop when he didn’t I stood up holding a cow boy belt with a raised horse head on the buckle in my hand for protection well bright one
****** it out of my hand and slapped me in the face with it remember I said bull he was two years older than me but I was big and all
Muscle then I threw my head back and when the blood rose through my eyes I was blind it didn’t matter is was black in the large
Pavilion I couldn’t see only red just before that I was in danger I have seen what a pack of hounds can do to a **** on the ground
I was the **** all were getting ready to rush in but when my blood hit my brain the volcano erupted on his sorry self I picked him up off
The floor then he needed protection God was there if he would have gone down on the cement floor or into the picnic table how they
Are made his back would have been broken but I threw him across the table two feet to the table over the table another four feet
Into a red fence that was stretched there one pole to the next he was going head first about four feet off the ground that fence
scrapped the floor then when it got to the two points those bolts snapped it sounded like a high powered rifle going off he and the
Fence continued two to three feet off the edge of the floor then three feet out in the grass where it folded up around him the fight
Was Over the others wouldn’t even acknowledge him lying out there groaning the fence had become his safety net the next day the
Dad who owned the sleeping bag looked at the two of us and asked what happened to you two I couldn’t see my face but he had three
Deep imprints of the fence stakes plus the twisted wire was plainly visible the marks were up and down you can say they lasted a while
so I looked at this pistol waving clown and just laughed turned and walked down to the MP station I did thirty days clerking in the
Headquarters office for rearranging the day room to the way I wanted it messing with the army is Childs play then God came on the
Scene not so fun I experienced the same thing that happened to a guy that I worked with at the refinery when I knew him he was
An old man I was seventeen but later when he was dying of cancer his neighbor who was in our church set with him and as she did she
Prayed for him until God spoke to her and said don’t pray anymore he rejected me when he was young now I’m rejecting him the story
Behind this was this man was driving a truck back then they had to go out and literally pull him out of the cab his hands were like claws
His nerves were gone that’s what happened to me the only reason I didn’t use lsd was the kid used it all and then the angel had to step
In before salvation came again I was unaware of this but I went to the fire house I set down at the desk next to this other kid and he
kept smiling finally I had enough I asked what’s so funny you don’t remember no remember what last night you ran in and stood at the
Top of the steps six seven feet up out of the office I ran in said the MPS didn’t catch me I then hollered I’m superman and I did a flip
Down on the cement floor I did remember laying on the floor hollering at the fire chief as he slept in the back room off of the office he
Finally told someone to take me back to the barracks so stupidity was running rampant but I was the crew chief and I did my job
And then it happened just like my friend in the truck that had to be pulled out I lost it I was a basket case I couldn’t think straight
Minor jobs that were simple overwhelmed me when that starts you start looking for answers it didn’t take me long to know what was
Going on this rebels running from God had come to a screeching halt I finally had the boys take me to Monterey and let me out I threw
Away the cigarettes checked into a motel a few blocks from the church had to literally cry for God to let me have peace so that I could
Sleep and in the morning dressed went to church as I walked by the windows I heard the congregation singing the songs of Zion a
precious peace settled over me I was home where I belonged.

This is long and serves as a starting point that I want to continue up to Christ’s day of Christmas if it doesn’t work out least you know
my testimony and you can see what God has done for me but I want to try and renew my life and maybe touch you along the way

Helen sends me scraps of poems for repair.  "Shreds of lettuce," she calls them. I fool around with them in my role as Poetry Doctor (see my banner photo). In her extended absence, I will post our convolutions. While the final product is mine, the vision, the imagery, the notion of the poem is all hers and therein lies the true authorship.



From Helen, Dec 2
Here is the last of the salad,
dressing not required...

savoir-faire [?sævw???f??

Upon a plate
of deliciousness
the lettuce
is usually
pushed to the side
to wilt
and be scrapped
into an
Industrial bin
were we all begin
as fodder for worms
turning garbage
into words
Nourishing
nothing
but our own pride



bon appétit
Helen
---------------

The Human Word Salad

Now it is dressed....*


all poems, no exception,
the bad, the exceptional,
all begin
in an
industrial bin.

wormwood,
wormword
the ancestors,
feast on the scraps,
garbage letters discarded,
the wilts of alpha lettuce,
the word waste of the
every day beta jabber,
plate pushed-aside decorations,
all but none, bystanders

and they

turn them into words,
though inedible, incapable,
of nourishing life individually,
yet their recycled deliciousness,
unquestioned.

when
each sole word,
re-birthed in the compost
of the delivery room of that bin,
meet in the maternity ward
of our minds
words wed,
poems form,
and all the true nourishment
the world needs
begins anew.