Marines call to say hello,
impress. I'm over 35 but my boys
19. They could go: Hide!

One moment spent tying a shoe,
another dying, gunshot wound or poisoned food.
Events in their mere chronology
                                                      ­ make no sense.
And the details of yr dad's life don't either.
                                                         ­               Late night
quiet cigarette smoker. But next day,
the butts cleaned into the can. Who does that?
Lady in a skirt or overalls rolled up - cigarette smoke.
Now it's yr dad.
                            Yr dad who
                                                 watches for war.

Even if Uncle Sam disbands, dissolves
we the people will still be here and stay involved
with North America. The purple mountains majesty
                           and shining seas
little people, big people, brown, red, and white. Addicted
                           to action movies.
Perhaps there is no choice. One must sit, sitting still
                           as a buddha, sitting bull.
I can imagine myself and all others - drivers, voters, runners -
                           little fetal muscles
at first. Metastasizing. What's it called when the cell
                           at the tip of the *****
or organism, divides, and the ***** grows? It's called
                           ******* a bicycle.

I find I make no sense. Her ****, a practicality to her, is
                           delicious to me
a miraculous sea lettuce or snapdragon. You've heard it before.
                           A moral dilemma
wrapped in robes and silks and odors. Yet, come close,
                           and business beckons
work gets done, life goes on, hair grows in, we go on
                           vacation
the Marine Corps calls, desperate for new fetuses to teach
                           purposeful workmanlike killing
I'll do my own killing, thanks, when violence comes to the
      neighborhood
                           if I've got your back
your back's gotten and if I'm on point, the point's taken.

One world under God invisible with liberty and justice for all who
                           Art in heaven
what the hell's his name.
                                          Nemesis.
        ­                                                  Hysterical.
The small war of an especially inept empire. The world's too big
to swallow as the Krauts and Nips found out. Empire
is self-correcting. Them dark-skinned mustachioed *******
who can't fix their own electricity seem to be kicking our *****
pert good. As did the ***** before them. All to the good. A
good lesson to know and then we all become friends following
the brawl. We apparently cannot skip the fight. It must
be fought, and **** the girls.

In Ulzana's Raid,
the Native- and European-American concepts of property
      ownership and rights
are incompatible and irresolvable. McIntosh
had no illusions about that. He said hating Apaches for killing
      whites
is like hating the desert for having no water.
I suspect the movie's not a good source of anthropological
      data
and overlooks the commonalities among human communities
to focus on just a few bold characters
as all art must.

I consider McIntosh fortunate
to have died commensurate with the way he lived his life,
rolling a final cigarette, nothing between him and the desert,
and no gravediggers waiting, jesting, defecating. Also,
he is lucky to have had one last, dispassionate friend
to whom there is nothing left to say, the Chiracahua tracher
Kah-ti-nay.

Last night's performance of Beauty and the Beast
may have been the most victorious, ecstatic, cohesive
moment in our little school's history. Emily was Beauty, a
      filament of energy
who doesn't like to be touched and has been known to punch
boys hard. She had memorized her lines until she was hardly
Emily but only Beauty in a blue dress unselfconsciously
hiking up her tights between the Beast's advances.
Is this done in every American town and the world
over so there's no need to feel lost or lonely
ever?

There is no context for a man
outside the platoon or raiding party, home or shop.
When violence comes to the neighborhood,
the hierarchy of communicants will hold or fold
it is then the peace work proves relevant. I noticed McIntosh,
grizzled as he was, accepted the given hierarchy, a raw
      lieutenant's orders,
as he did the desert and Apaches, with a shrug and
      foreknowledge
of the outcome. If there's anywhere with no Emily or Beauty
we should bring them such blessings at the point of a
gun. But there is no place without Emily, not
the least-known prison in deepest space as long
as we do not hate or hurt or shun
the Beast.

We should have gone outside instead of watching one
of the sillier, senseless, meaningless movies it is possible
to rent or buy. Winter or not the fields and woods
are at least real, commensal and understandable if
you know the genus and species. Know the genome
and biome. Learn the physics and music.

But this much reality requires an escape, hence
bad movie. A bad book is better than a bad movie.
A good movie trumps a bad book, but a good book is best
and a great poem trumps all. Will my son Zach be one
who applies the scientific method? Can Aaron explain
God's intentions to the people? Their mother and I will wait.

Five days of steady rain. A hurricane approaches the city. The streets are flooding but the wildlife is thriving. Every person wears a raincoat or carries an umbrella. Indoors is cozy. Movie theaters are crowded in the early afternoon. We who live alone are more isolated; those who live together are more aggravated. The heavens are having a fine time belting it out.

            A fly is swept from a windowpane in early August but men's machines are almost oblivious to the storm. Except the wires in Mr. Glyckman's Volvo are wet. People's dreams begin to take place in the water. When they awake their thoughts are floating in the puddle of night.

            Raindrops slap the leaves and splash the ground. Travel is not advised, wherever you are it seems like home. Next month dirt on the shingles of the house will remind the painter of the great rain. Even the rain no longer makes an impression on the earth, only a ripple in the rain. If there are mountains or the sea they seem more like brother and sister than father and mother these days. Summer feels like winter.

            Children are less visible and mothers are women who were once girls. Nightclubs are full and the listeners listen more seriously. Music continues but the rain muse has her say. Lovers are less joyous and more happy. The full moon's influence is muted by clouds, the blood between people is thicker. The Himalayas come to the Rockies and the Rockies reach for the Alps. The imagination comes to the market.

            The roads leading down to the river are empty and wet and the bright painted houses along them are quiet. A dog and a cat under a porch patient and unperturbed. A love-gnarled man with a brown beard and walking stick walks in the middle of the street. If a curtain moves, a woman wonders how many days he's been out in the rain like a child. But only the water winding back to the sea, a mad naked saint at the Last Judgement, welcomes him home.

Wherever peaches grow I go and pick 'em.
When they get ripe I try and swipe 'em.
The farmer runs out with a shotgun and wonders where's the
      varmint gone?
I'm hiding by the railroad tracks stacking the peaches I've
      found.

Then a freight train about a mile long rolls by hauling a bucket
      of rain.
I hop aboard while beautiful clouds gather to the north.
I put my peaches in the bucket and lug it to a hidden part of
      the train.
The rain begins, the night looms in, it's summer and it's
      thoughts and warm.

To the clacking rumble and the patter I close my eyes and
      dream.
An earthquake swallows up the people who wear horrible
      masks of fright as their daily tasks are trampled.
In a favorite movie theater an illumined lady puts her hand in
      mine, warm mouths, breath, skin, hair wing-soft, whole
      bodies, wind, bare.
I open my eyes at sunrise there's a steady glow of light
      around.

If you can believe in God, you can believe the mountains go
      from purple to green.
While the last partier meanders home to bed the first farmer is
      up to milk his bread.
Fruit of the world ripens audibly and cities make a silent,
      distant sound.
Lonely guy stretches, rubs his eyes, pees out a passing train,
      has a breakfast of peaches and rainwater.

I'm watching an old Soviet movie
one without English subtitles
the whole day it hasn't stopped raining
the opening shots are of a foggy

seafront, a lone figure walking
a guy on a bicycle holding a puppy
riding past someone leaning on the corner
of a house in which the light

suddenly comes on & a couple appear
later on, a budding romance
between two holidaymakers in this, the Crimea
slow-paced, this movie reminds

me of an Aki Kaurismaki
& I want to share it with the world
& muse on how the Crimea
saw Pushkin, Chekhov, Mayakovsky

amongst others visiting it's shores
the whole day it hasn't stopped raining
& I don't know if I feel even more English
now or Russian or whether it's all just a trick

Let the film end before intermission
characters be underdeveloped
let the plot lie open like cut veins

and let the the background score
resonate in the hall at its shrill note

It's a broken piece of the heart
cracked into two:
two faces reside here now
on either sides of the chasm.

Make whatever you wish out of it
Sweet or bitter end,
tragedy, comedy or farce
or thriller or horror,
write your own story, make it up.

take any road up the hill
to eternity beyond.

Now I just come to realize
that he is the entire movie
and the rest are advertisements
but wait
I think he's feeling
the exact same thing
*about her

She called me fool,
I heard it,
I loved it.
AAAAAAAARGGGGH.
Furiosa,
beautiful-strong.

Tho I'm Max,
Mad,
I am mad,
AAAAAARGHH,
I see my daughter sometimes,
she haunts my mind,
I miss-
AAAAARGHHHH.

The girls....
Not property anymore,
The coat-
AAAAARRRGHHH
breathes harshly breathes harshly
Mine.

The car....
Mine.
It's gone.

My blood...
Nux..
I wa-
AAAAARGGHHHH
breathes harshly breathes harshly breathes harshly
his blood bank,
he

HE's

Gone.