Harry Patch, Harry Patch
Last man standing
Who saw so many, many fall
Beyond our understanding

Your body is weak, and your time must come soon
But your will is strong and your spirit shines through

You've lived so long, now you must be strong
And tell those tales of fear and regret
The ones you tried so hard to forget

Sijo 1  

The rapid rattle fire, red tracers screaming in silent air,
woke me from half dream sleep--eyes open are better than eyes closed,
when ears are filled with black noise, and Victor Charlie wants me dead

The medals from Vietnam only saw light
when it fanned beneath the bed
so that when you removed them
the black velvet had grown forty years
of grey moss

it wasn’t that you wanted to forget them
but that they couldn’t stack up against
the black and white time lines
the photographs of your children
my mother, aunt and uncle
that grew into color by the top of the stairs

it wasn’t a matter of forgetting
it was a matter of choice
and the shark teeth and crab jackets
that all the cousins pulled out of the Chesapeake
stayed on the shelf because
that was what you were fighting for

the only relic you decided
to keep in plain view
laid right next to the crab jackets
a little vial wrapped around
a little metal tooth

because when the mortar flashed like a stroke
inches from your head
your thoughts went to home
and that fragment of near death
you keep in the glass vial
looking out over the living room
to tease it, to torture it, to say
Not even you could make me forget

Last time I saw you was a year ago
and you were dying
bruises bubbled anywhere a corner touched your flesh
and oily scales peeled from the shell of skin
stretched over your forehead

last year you told us everything about your medals
they were all just throwaways
though your wife and daughter pried,
you knew that remembering them was a waste of dying time

now two more strokes since that mortar flash
have left you in the ward
people have stopped visiting
because visitors like to be recognized
and when Marmee sits and watches football with you
she hates football
she asks you what teams are playing
you sob
*I used to know.

you are absolutely necessary and utterly unimportant.
you are not important because
everything is important and important means
you are better than the mud
you are not

i can say this because
i want to be content. and to be so
i think i must owe myself to everything. because every little piece makes the puzzle, every tiny drop of paint changes the color, whether
you or
i can see it. down to the atom, every rock that
i step on, every bird in my ear, every bearable sting of guilt felt from swatting a fly, they have worked in perfect proportion, each paint drops precisely suffused to the present shade of my experience. and if
i am to be at peace, my life should not be measured but
i must be accepting of
everything as it comes.
i find this possible in realizing that the stretch in my smile and the tears on my cheek are all just as needed in shading me. no single experience makes the man.  and to be accepting of the summation
i must accept that every single experience in my collective past was utterly necessary. every single experience, and each minor detail of each experience, and how they  scatter on the surface like little melting beads, and how they eventually sink and mix; all single molecules of paint diffusing in the only proportion to make the present shade of my life, none more important than the other, down to the atom, ultimately equal.
not in quantity, but in quality
everything equal. what it means is that
i love you. but
i love the sweat greased ball bearings of dirt in my boot
i love the percussion of infection drenched nerves in my foot
i love the salt stick of your skin and staunch of your cough as you beat through the barreling wind. and
i love the invisible river of shivering brush waving like cilia down the valley. into the bioluminescence of our L.A. colony.
i love you if you love me and
i love you if
you hate me.  because even your hate will drop like paint into me and change the shade to something
i have not yet seen.
i know we have different eyes but
i think this works for mine.
i will love you in equivalence to every molecule
i breathe.
utterly unimportant and absolutely necessary.

Somewhere near the turn of the century, the walk was hot enough to burn your feet.
Sometime after that I was born in Phoenix.
My sister and I threw paint over a cardboard box in the garage and called it a spaceship.
My grandfather was too tall to be an astronaut, but now plastic tubes in his lungs keep him tied to earth while he waits for sixty years of smoke to catch up to him.
When we were younger, he drove us to the beach on the Chesapeake where we’d look for shark teeth.
Before that, A German Shepherd ripped a hole in my cheek.
Sometimes I feel the rough little scar inside my mouth.
But more often I see round little scar on my hand
When I was nine, my father taught me how to climb rocks.
The trick is you don’t worry about the flesh left on the granite.
Then a lake broke my mother’s back after she jumped in from the same height as I did.
We decide to hike from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney, and I walk most of the trail ahead, by myself.
But at night we all play harmonica and yell because we are the only ears around.
On the stage, we yell because our ears are tired of being lonely.
Then we’d stumble drunk and put out cigarettes on each other’s hands.
And later I would pull my brother out of pool of his own *****.
And later I would pull my brother out of pool of his own blood.
And later I would let a lover sink into her own mind.
Now my sister sees me through a screen, a brother is all foggy in Seattle, and my mother and father miss the way I’d play music all the time.
The trick is you don’t worry about the flesh you left behind.