You were in your forties then, lived upstairs with your
old man, gave the neighborhood someone to feel better
than. I was maybe nine or ten, and Franny, oh! I could
have cried when he blacked your pretty gypsy eye and
Franny, oh! my restored hope when I saw Joe, his lip laid
open; Franny, you could throw a punch. So here's to right
hooks, Franny. Here's to gin before lunch. Here's to street
smarts and cunning hearts. I didn't end up like you. I got
out of the neighborhood. I'm my own woman; that's our
slogan, but you know, Franny, sometimes even that 
makes me feel like I'm swinging my fists in a third floor flat.

A hippie hocked a louie on Sammy
when he landed in San Francisco.

Sammy didn't respond;
he just wanted to make
his connecting flight home.

Sammy wasn't proud about
some of things he did in the war;
so he figured he probably
deserved the garlands of disdain
an ungrateful nation bestows
upon itself in fits of self contempt.

Sammy shut down and tuned out,
soon his heart was as dead
as a tombstone until he visited
the monument.  

He would often recall the story
that as he approached the darkened
wall he could sense ghosts loosening
themselves from the black granite.   

Sammy swore that Jimmy Lynch
who went MIA on the final week of his tour
gave him a bear hug and told him
as long as the beer stays cold
and he don’t lose the church key,
everything's groovy and he’s
hanging tough until the rest
of the guys show up.

Jimmy pointed to the Lincoln Memorial
at one end of the mall and to the
Washington Monument at the other,
emphatically stating that our monument
was forever linked with the greatest Americans.

Yeah meeting up with Jimmy
helped Sammy to start shaken
off some real bad stuff.

Mazie knew her husband for a
month before they got married.
A week later Freddie was off to Vietnam.

Freddie was KIA during the Tet Offensive
and his repatriated remains are peacefully
at rest in the red clay of Georgia.

An always faithful Mazie
came to the monument
a few years after it was dedicated.  
She was struck by all the keepsakes
people left at the base of the wall;  
Zippos, baby pictures, a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye, a fifth
of Makers Mark, Pink Teddy Bears,
votive lights, a red 57 Chevy model,
a left handed catchers mitt, and
a pack of Lucky Strikes.

She palmed rosaries and
crucifixes that salved sore
running wounds and David’s
interlaced Star sounding a Shofar
pleading a case for peace.

Mazie is most moved by the names.  
Rows and rows of names. The scroll
begins in a modest manner and
as the wall climbs the names
of a country's vigilant sons and
daughters tower over her head.  
So much living history; spoken
in the unique accent of a country’s
diverse plethora of luminous tongues.

The stories written into the black granite
tell a tale from every state; claiming
the ears, heart and mind of every citizen. 
Each chiseled letter captures every bit
of sun and deep creeping shadow
inching across a great nation.

“I’m  71” says Mazie.  “When I look
upon the wall I see my 21 year old
Freddie as he looked on the finest
day of his life.  He will never look
any other way to me.”
  
“I didn't want to go to see it,” Franny said,
“a cold piece of stone won’t bring my son back.”

Franny did finally go...

When it rains the wall weeps.  
The wall wept all day,
the first time Franny went.

Many were rubbing
the impressions of
dearly departed names.

Franny too, kneels to the
presence of her son’s name.

With a mother's
grateful fingers,
she touches the wall's
damp surface; wiping
the drizzle from her
child's sodden face.

Kneeling before his semblance,
she rubs his etched edges
onto tiny bits of paper.

She sees him,
made manifest in the stone.
As if through a glass darkly,
a found son looks back,
onto the face of a caring mother.

Franny hangs onto the quiet
memory of his voice,
shimmering in the soft lilt
of a warm dark stone.

This deep core Vulcan gneiss,
at last emerged from the hardest stuff,
sculpts a perfect likeness of a tear stained nation.

The Harmonizing Four: Rock of Ages

In Honor of
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Washington DC

Oakland
Veterans Day
2013

elane liked *******
and quite possibly ******
and what ever they called ****
in the late 70's/early 80's

she had a daughter named franny
who i played with
and a husband named glen
who she cheated on when he was out
milking the cows

all the milkers smoked cigarettes
and lived in mobile homes down the hill
from us

except for max who went to church with us
my dad offered him a job while he was in jail
i think he turned himself in for some crime
when he got saved

my dad always liked to hire ex-convicts
because he was a firm believer in grace and mercy
and second chances

anyways, once franny and i got into a fight
about our dads
she said her dad was the boss,
which was confusing to me because
i thought my dad was the boss
we both got mad and cried

i used to pick up the cigarette butts
that the milkers had left in some dried out mud puddle
(i was five or younger so give me a break)
and pretend i was smoking

since my parents were united pentacostal
i was taught all about the glorious
tribulations and persecutions that i would have to live
through before jesus raptured us all to heaven

before i was old enough to be terrified
i pictured myself as being left behind
smoking cigarettes, hiding out in trees
kind of looking forward to it

whenever i would go over to franny's place
we would watch cartoons. ****** doo was my favorite
my parents didn't have a tv, so franny's was where it was
at for me.

elane would come out of her bedroom and yell at
franny to turn the tv down because she was trying to sleep

franny was always telling me how her mommy
had an owie in her nose

later on, glen quit
and moved away with franny and elane

and the mobile home they had lived in
burnt down