Fireworks were cool. Framed metal chairs with woven nylon Americana on watered lawns on the outskirts of the edge of Los Angeles. Hairy neighbors, Miller Drafts and dog ****. Sally ****** Jim on the corner, and Jim drank, or started again and wouldn’t stop, but was good with a flat tire and chain adjustment. His kid had a glove like a vacuum. His daughter was a *****. Sally afforded a Mexican gardener.

Tim always had fireworks. He had gasoline and willed fireworks into his driveway. He had rope and a keg.

Schatzky keep her cool. She had to. She worked the 5th and taught everyone’s kids. She taught their parents too, 10 years ago.

Her son Donavan and her husband Keith lived for the 4th. Little pink houses and Jack and Diane kind of ****. So they watched fireworks on flag hill while their neighbors ****** and got ******* and burnt their eyebrows. Donavan was ecstatic.

Each year the hill was gilded in gold for Donavan and Keith and and Schatzky, because each 4th brought fire and explosives in a way they could never afford.

Keith was more patriotic than most. He waited and enlisted and became a hero. Donavan watched on TV. Schatzky watched too. We won the first gulf war and everyone knew it: https://youtu.be/4gNhs2SRacs?t=1m10...

They celebrated the fourth in baseball stadiums. They celebrated life and heroism and purpose, and they celebrated with F16s and the best explosives the peacetime nation offered.

And Keith celebrated and embraced purpose. He even became a leader in the 2nd gulf war.

Sally stopped ******* Jim. Jim wasn’t married anymore. His kid lowered Tim’s basement and didn’t steal the copper.

Tim’s house was worth a fortune but it had a radon problem.

Schatsky was accused of drowning her dog, but she didn’t do it.

Jim still drinks; he’s smarter now.

They all meet on flag hill every 4th. The fireworks aren’t as good. A lot of build up for a finale that feels like an accident.

Water seeps through my jeans and no one can see my face as I limp home with a broken rubber sandal and a bucket of ice, a dog tied around my legs, and a kid face first on the grass, a wife whose friend drank our last beer an hour ago, a phone with  two-percent battery left and my mom wants to show me what fireworks look like in California.

I was chicken
dropped only a half tab--a quarter before midnight  
and hurried back to my apartment
before the day changed    

from a Monday
to a ruby Tuesday  
where my walls melted
and music smelled like sassafras;
the flickering flares of light from two fat candles  
tasted like toasted almonds    

every eternal hour, or minute,
or so, I would try to tiptoe down the hall  
past the sleeping neighbors who were all dreaming
of me, skulking past their locked doors

but I never made it to the street
a feat that would have demanded
I stop giggling, and my heart stop thumping
for any pig or narc could have seen
my crimson machine pumping
ready to fly from my chest    

dawn did finally come--I was
coming down, down from the floor
on which I had lain from the minute
a ferocious fly dive bombed me
somewhere around three  

I walked to the corner grocery store
where I bought pan dulce, and was glad the clerk
spoke no English, for surely she would have asked me
to tell her how I survived such an aerial assault  
in peacetime

toasting the cameo appearance of my twin sister, I admire the leg of two rather tipsy women.  a soldier stands on a bar stool in such a way his non-soldier friends become sad.  they shake the stool but not for long.  the soldier chides them for giving up.  the leg hops its way outside.  ahead of schedule.

If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father
  had broken a leg parachuting into Provence
to join the resistance in the final stage of the war
  and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north
out of Italy and if the friend who was with him
  as he was dying had not had an elder brother
who also died young quite differently in peacetime
  leaving two children one of them with bad health
who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness
  and if I had written anything else at the top
of the examination form where it said college
  of your choice or if the questions that day had been
put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning
  had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty
so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church
  in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if
my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child
  so that she had to go to her grandmother's in Pittsburgh
I would not have found myself on an iron cot
  with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse
that had stood empty since some time before I was born
  I would not have traveled so far to lie shivering
with fever though I was wrapped in everything in the house
  nor have watched the unctuous doctor hold up his needle
at the window in the rain light of October
  I would not have seen through the cracked pane the darkening
valley and the river sliding past the amber mountains
  nor have wakened hearing plums fall in the small hour
thinking I knew where I was as I heard them fall

There are moments

those little bursts of happiness

you wish could last a lifetime.

Then there’s those longer moments of sadness

you wish would leave

before bedtime.

pi in the sky
numbers dwindle-
division, subtraction...
zero times anything equals a zero

BOOM  BOOM  BOOM!
with the rifle pointed skyward-
perfect the trifold
presented to the widow

peacetime pride,  worn upon your chest...
("feel-good" print- she passed her final test)

banner waved,  reduced to ash by flame
(pantywaist) intimidating fame

"Stolen Valor" shouted by young gun
sharpshooter saved your life again,  my son

older,  wiser,  wartime conscription victim
against the volunteer, peacetime freeride
you,  younger knowitall
who never faced it,  
strutting like a cockerel full of pride

BOOM BOOM BOOM!
the fireworks you splay....
pride of your "sacrifice" on display

and your suckup ***** ***** your ego
blinded by distortion

bull's-eye bead drawn on the back...
did his death elevate your stance?
can you somberly raise your barrel skyward?
do you revel in your Victory Dance?

divide our numbers-
factor in subtraction.
bear witness to the emaciation of the faction

oh "King", did you come to find
the stolen glory within your midnight mind..?
or have the hearse's headlights left you blind?

DOOM DOOM DOOM
belief in you,  abating....
the voices of those who bought it,  fading...

Cut into her skin to see what she’s made of

    Her bones shake with noise

    Her heart beats a rhythm

    Her blood flows to a melody that escapes

        with every slice of her vein

Though they say she’s beautiful

They don’t see the scars of battle

    There is no peacetime in this war.

She’s tired.

They say “keep fighting”

    but they don’t know

        that she gave up long ago

You see, there is a monster that can’t be killed.

It will win in the end

No matter how much she puts in.

This is no fight.

It is a bloodbath

    There is no coming back.

Capsules unload down her throat and her eyes close

She’s tired.

She swallows the poison with no hesitation

    and lays on her bed

        whiskey by her head.

She never knew the appeal of the drink

    but figured it would do the trick.

All she ever wanted in life was the sleep when she was sick.

They told her she was born with illness in her mind

    and too much compassion.

They said she should look out for herself

    so she looked into her heart

She saw the exhaustion and knew what to do.

She fell asleep and will never come to.

Without reason, in peacetime state
There stands the enemy at the gate
And the gates are holding, iron-wrought
But arrows slip through the bars and rock

And with his army held but immortal still
The Lord of Babylon waits until
A weakened moment, the changing guard
To bring fire and doubt and idol gods

But in castle courtyard, stands a Shepard
Who in faithful watch serves duties two
On his blooded right: the arrows
And in the other hand is you.

It's unthinkable to a castle's king
That victory be in surrender
But never had the Shepard led astray
And was let through unhindered

And the army lacking death and reason
Drew back their ranks in fear
For here stood the Shepard, proven dead
By Longinus's spear.

And the clanging sound of sword and shield
Of armor, whip and chain
Fell for the first time ever, silent.
At king's crying of His Name.

My friend Dale
complains constantly.
He's a millionaire,
but says he's
always broke.
He quit drugs, and
rubs it in everyone's
face.
He rages when the
world is at war,
and complains that
it's too quiet during
peacetime.
He talks horribly to
his friends, and he
smokes cheap cigars.
He doesn't like
art, and he's never
read a book.

Dale has a small
pond in the back
of his house where swans
listen to Mozart and
mate, while squirrels and
raccoons share pomegranates
and waltz all night
long under that big yellow
laughing moon.

beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it

the world just keeps on turning
and warming up the globe
nations of hate hotter than warheads
hate ain't what they pay us for
be a boss but don't be bossy,
boxing in a corner lot

everyones a leader
leading no one
supply and demand spinning pulsar-fast
economies based on wars
collapsing under peacetime
without fires
the lobbies smothered fighters

beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it

inflation  cannot haul us up
here at the bottom of the heap
can't even afford the beep
beep that tells us what's wrong in our hearts
medical bills ticking higher numbers than volumes of get-well cards
we're under attack
our changing family pact

beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it

spoken word, short form
bytes from sharpened canines
written word, formatted to the dimensions of our icons
glittering oh one around us in the haze
our might in roaming-charged clouds of war
you can burn the papers
ban the books
we weren't writing in your margins anyway

our beat is undrummed, uncensored by you
language we took, righteous and true
and the ideas we kept to hurl out
our aim would be true

shout now
aim for us, beat poets

beat poet the times they are a changin'

Isn't there a better way?
O'er this snakeskin shedding,
Than this slow emotional death
Looking for cartharsis
Never to be?

Please, make me, me.
Release me from the birdcage,
And tell me where to dream.

Ah, I look for a tool of my own,
Somewhere buried in the dirt,
Because I am a plow without purpose,
A sword in peacetime.

Sheathed, but mostly lost.
Meaningless, but not wandering,
and so there is no journey,
no art.


Stagnation. Ah.
And a slow morose breath.
Just one long, inhale
For no greater cosmic purpose,
Than the exhale, fleeting.

What a beauty, she said in my agonizing reverie.
Smiling, turning, leaning,
Oyasumi, Good morning.
And the sun's lights ne'er did beam.
The morning stayed dark.
I died, there
heart still beating.

I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.

Some treat me like a criminal
And some are calling me traitor
For doing my patriotic duty
And following my legal orders.
If had done otherwise there
I would have been in prison.
I don’t know what this is about
Or from where it has risen.

I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.

Do people now go to work
And decide what they will do?
And if they want to do nothing
They loaf around? Is that true?
I know they do in Congress now
But has it taken the trickle down
And now following orders is
Above the average working clown?

I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.

During our tour of duty, we all heard
Some Americans had complained,
Thought we ought to not be there,
Hated us because we remained.
They lost control of our peacetime
Right here on our own home base.
Yet they wanted us to stop the war
No matter that we would be replaced.

I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.

I saw forties newsreels of ticker tape
Falling on huge marching parades
Celebrating our fighting military
And the sacrifices they had made.
Back home now many neighbors
Curse at me and look at me as scary
Instead of a recently returning hero
From their own country’s military.

I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.

And Congress voted down help
For those of us who are wounded.
The V.A. used to take care of us
Before the ‘One Percent’ fine-tuned it.
Now many of my brothers and sisters
Who did their duty suffer defeat
At the hands of their own country
And lay dying in our city streets.

I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.

I am a ballpark moth.
a buzzing light is made my home tonight

in time it dries my wings and takes my flight
but for now i live aloft a peacetime game all
shouts and metal.

If i could say,
i know i can’t,
Like a broken arm cast in sound aluminum,
Unmoveable
                                        but highly mobile.

Soon enough you’ll hear a mother’s admiration,
pride by proxy someone taught me:
Aggression   in sublimation.

What makes a mother fly i’ll never know.
I refuse to help mythmake America’s obsessions.

smoke or dirt or metal war

mythologize

and I’ll wait forever for these wings to dry.

What you wanted was war
Thundering and merciless
Wanted Armageddon to roll in
So you could follow every avenging angel
Brash with bloodlust
And feel righteous in the end

I felt the shift in the atmosphere
Heard the horsemen, saw the lightning
But I had long ago grown weary
Of desperate, clashing swords

You built trebuchets
So I built walls
Studying the stillness of stones
Observing the physics of load bearing and
Force balancing and
Standing unshaken as the sky itself shatters

The onslaught was calculated
Unyielding and arrogant
But of all the accusations lobbed over the ramparts
The only ones that drew blood
Were those fashioned after my own devices
Those festering things that grew out of my nightmares
Seeded with the secrets I'd once let fall in peacetime

You've called out endlessly for my head
But I won't bleed out for you here
I've been studying the patience of water
The salty tracks quietly working their way
Through all the hard places
Out to the sea

I won't bleed out for you here
I faced the red maw that would unmake me
I spun my own stitches out of ether
And lived

It rained again last night
The flooded trenches alive with rats
Behind us pigs from destroyed farms
Feast on the bodies of French long dead
Shell fire ceaseless
Machine guns sing, men die
Yes men die
Just a mile away, a gentle *****
Leads to Pachendale ridge
Just a gentle walk in peacetime
With slow meandering streams
I am long since dead, destroyed by
Shot and shell
I gave my life for you my love
For you, for you not for my country that I fell
Out lads out and the whistles shrilled
Out lad out 'this your time to be killed
Robots of old, numbed, scrambled minds
We left the safety of this place
Into the holocaust of *******
To be mangled and destroyed by burning
Shot and shell
Keep going boys, keep going
There's just a mile to cross
But a mile of mud and devils hell
And for every yard a man was lost
Cleanly killed by the bullets bite!!!!
If he was lucky yes
But more likely to drown in mud and blood
As the gory shell hole ****** him down

Ypres 1915

Developing a nicotine addiction
over the silk ambiguity
of a pleasure twitch.
Covering up those cyanide dreams,
stapled at the seams,
with obvious white Pickett fences
& regurgitation.


Her desires rattle
in a spilt tongue oscillation.
Contradicting,
foreign mumbles
spill out like crimson
viscosities;
my mind was a
pig slop maelstrom
amoung those
ancient seconds

Those words will clatter
together like a phantom
in my plasmatic ear
waxes
until
Peacetime:

"I love you."

No hesitation.
Solidified.

****** like an
Indiana Jones
classic.

Intoxicated remakes of that
time we started something:
An archive for death memories,
recollected long after
your exodus.

Asphyxiated.

war tax is generational
it never ends
eating into every peacetime.

Four Freedoms Under Siege Serialized

"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms."

The first is freedom of speech and expression-everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-anywhere in the world.**

--Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Annual Message to Congress,
January 6, 1941

It's sixty below & peacetime
& we gotta do what???
Start the ******* tracks
to warm up the oil,
'cause it's
standard operation procedure!!!

Tell the crazy General
& his staff to come
down here in this blizzard
to lick my metal shaft.
That'd give the boys a laugh!

Rest in peacetime Bernard Jordan,
Respect for this brave old soldier.
Now may he be free.
Your dearest wish was granted.
A rebel with a clue.
He knew what he wanted to do.
Bless you.
(c) Livvi

In the summer before the world went mad
Einstein summered at Peconic bay.
He walked the beach in shorts and sandals,
He was quite bohemian in his way.
Soon he would write that letter to Roosevelt
And the atomic age will have begun.
But, for the moment, he was just
A middle aged man
enjoying his last peacetime Sun.
The stars are more numerous than
The grains of sand
And space more infinite
That the sea.
His best days were, by then, behind him,
But happier he would never be.

our lives twist and turn
ebb and flow

our past
the knuckles of twigs to branches
the snake of a meandering river
creating lakes,
a hand and a reflection of
current state

there was beauty there -
nervous bodies collapsing
on each other, peacetime
handsaws dividing time
like honorary saints

we harpooned chaotic hopes
and dreams, orphaned our logic,
made love in a tree under glittering
moons

if only it was
so poetic

really, just cannibalistic
lonesome ******
looking for an angry fix
vultures aflutter for a carcass

perhaps that was me
not you, no matter

our magnetic climaxes
of mind and flesh only
bloopers of lives just
begun

now
holding my daughters in these
hands, my hands, smugglers of
truth and lies, i hold blind hope,
whisper conspiracies in their ears:

“the only way to win is forgiveness and love,
religion is a man’s fairytale they’d like you to believe,
the apocalypse will be man’s not god's,
politics is a man’s excuse for action,
love is a man’s lie for ***,
poverty is a man’s idea of justice,
war is a deformity of man’s making,
thank god you’re a woman!”

our disfigured past has
changed the genetic genome
of unimportant history, given me voice
and perspective

i can’t be sorry,
for the lies i’ve told,
the love and hate i’ve wrought,
its the greasy yarn of my soul
i weave in a simple shack of promise,
that, they’ll be better than me

i can’t be sorry