Only the Heart

As time passes

and memories fade

only the heart 

will forever keep

what is most precious

in this short life.

***

The Carpenter Bees

Carpenter bees roam 

the dandelions and 

purple-flowered weeds 

of my backyard, startled 

from their perch by 

the wheels of my mower.

They hover and flit, 

sometimes intertwined 

with others of their kind,

unable to stay aloft,

falling to the grass in pairs.

My five year old daughter 

sees that I am unafraid 

and walks into this spectacle 

of fuzzy helicopters and 

exclaims "they are so big!"

I remember them hovering 

near my father's barn

when I was a child, 

frozen in the air for a moment 

before moving on.  

It gave my little brain

the idea to get a  

handsaw to use like a bat.  

When they paused in flight 

to challenge my approach

I would swing the saw and 

hear the ping of their bodies 

meeting the flat side 

of the metal blade.  

I would track them down 

lying stunned in the grass, 

unable to fly or escape.  

I felt I was doing someone a service 

by smooshing them under my shoe, 

having outsmarted them with

my crude but effective weapon, 

for a moment feeling not-so-small,

releasing my rage, stinger-like.

***

The Rookie

I'm one of the parents who tends to come to my son's baseball practices and games to help out where I can without having to carry the designation of "coach" or even "assistant coach."  Because I own a catcher's mitt I've taken on the informal role of warming up the kids who will be pitching the next inning.

Last night the coach let one of the fourth graders in our 4th-5th grade mixed team start the game as pitcher (he’s the small guy at the far left of the picture looking at the camera).  I could tell he was nervous when I took him to the side to warm up.  He had never pitched before and he kept up a kind of nervous banter to talk himself through it.

When he went to make his first pitch his body was perpendicular to mine and he raised up his front leg as pitchers are known to do.  But instead of one fluid motion he just froze there for a few seconds with his leg pulled up looking like a navy blue flamingo.  He then stepped forward and threw a pretty decent pitch.

After watching him flamingo a few more times I suggested he continue to lift that leg like he was doing but make it more of a continuous motion without stopping. He tried it and the ball flew over my head by about four feet.  The coach called over for him to rejoin the team and I quickly told him, "Just do what feels comfortable."

He ended up doing remarkably well and I learned that sometimes a kid just has to go with what he knows.


***

Bedtime Routine

Night has fallen and the darkness
draws close looking for entrance
into our home through crack or crevice.

The kids are in bed and I am the last
left awake to wander the halls and
stand watch for their souls and bodies.

Their small heads on indented pillows
look serenely into the world of dreams,
safe in the knowledge of my presence.

My son's lips are slightly parted, an escape
route for his soul if God so chooses,
my finger on the light switch, hesitating.

Darkness claims his room and I move on
to the soft pink glow of my daughter's room,
her bright brown eyes shuttered for the night.

As I lie in my own bed, the darkness is
complete and I whisper the ending prayer
that is proper for such a time, the "little death"

Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my
soul and body.  Do Thou Thyself bless me,
have mercy upon me, and grant me life eternal.

Amen


***

"Peace"

In February of '91 I was flown down to Ft. Benning, Georgia to start Basic Training at twenty two years of age after talking to a recruiter and dropping out of my senior year of college.  I arrived at Reception Battalion on Sand Hill with long wavy hair and rounded John Lennon glasses.  The dreaded hair cuts/head shavings were on day two or three and during those first few days I picked up the nickname "Peace" from the other soon-to-be basic trainees.  We were a strange mix of shorn and unshorn young men caught between worlds of civilian and soldier.

Because I had three years of college I was given the rank of E-3 or “Private First Class”.  They put me in charge of six other young men and expected me to get them to formations and march them to the various appointments necessary to begin Basic Training.  I had no idea what I was doing.  I left-faced them when it should have been right.  I gave commands while in the parade rest position, not knowing I needed to be in the position of attention before doing so.  I had to make up the fire watch list that involved one hour shifts throughout the night of someone walking between the bunks with a flashlight.  Because I had no real authority if the shit was going to roll it was going to roll uphill making me the focal point of everyone’s frustrations.

It was a very dark time for me and something I had not anticipated.  I'd naively thought I would show up at Ft. Benning and be immediately immersed in yelling Drill Sergeants and crawling through mud.  This in-between place was lonely and interminable.  To make matters worse, the cohort of seven men I was a part of was an anomaly.  Everyone else was in a group of thirty or more and rotated through every 3-4 days.  Because my group was so small, they had a hard time getting us out to one of the Basic Training units and as a result we were there for ten of the longest days of my life.

At least a few of the six men in my group were what I'd consider to be of the criminal element from stories they shared of their backgrounds.  Whenever I'd screw something up they would make vile threats and demean me with the crudest of language.  Unlike Basic Training, there was no close oversight by a noncommissioned officer and so it felt like being in a sequel to the Lord of the Flies.  And in our culture of growing sexualization, these guys were the shock troops.  Every moment of downtime was spent talking of sexual exploits, both real and imagined.  To hear tell it, every female existed simply to fulfill a male's sexual fantasies and no perversion was too far out there to be the object of discussion.  My refusal to participate further isolated me, though there were a few who later showed me a begrudging respect for not going with the flow.

At some point I found time to send out a distress call to my older sister from a pay phone.  I don't know why I chose to call her over my parents, but when I heard her voice I immediately and involuntarily broke into tears that grew to sobs as I tried to speak.  Growing up our relationship had been adversarial to say the least, but that moment was the beginning of a change that continues to benefit me and my family.  It made that momentary experience of a perceived endless hell bearable and sowed seeds of healing in our relationship as brother and sister.  Those troubled young men had unwittingly acted as a catalyst for me to see her in a new light and for that, I remember them fondly.

***

bones

The ego makes its demands and

empties the soul of its substance

like a carnivorous T-rex whose

flesh has long left its bones.


***

St. Hoosierus

St. Hoosierus, play at the Hall for us winners...

Overshadow us with
your courtly might,

drive the paint and

spring into flight,

from the three-line

shoot out the lights,

and never forget 

the days of Knight.

***

An Empty Space

An empty space, long as a mile,
deep as an ocean, that echoes
with the sounds of wants that
are mistaken for needs, end-
lessly multiplied by a broken
culture that does not recognize
the ascetic beauty of temperance,
but instead accumulates bits
and pieces of the superficial
and time-limited, like a massive
landfill full of garbage that we
continually pile to the sky in
a futile effort to feel whole.


***

What Do You Want From Me?

I love how music evokes images and emotions in the mind and can even tell stories without words.  I've been listening to some Pink Floyd in my car recently and a song that has captured my imagination is “What Do You Want From Me?”

The opening has a slow plodding beat that is heavy on the drums and a funky wah-wah Hammond organ that comes straight out of the 70's.  What I see in my mind's eye is that Keep on Truckin’ guy drawn by Robert Crumb taking those exaggerated steps.  Anyone who grew up in the 60's or 70's knows exactly what I'm talking about.  Wikipedia informs me that those guys drawn walking over various landscapes "became iconic images of optimism during the hippie era."

So, that guy is strolling along taking a step for every beat, big goofy grin on his face, giving a thumbs up to bystanders as he struts down the middle of an inner city street.  If I were to make an animation of it I would postpone the entry of David Gilmour's guitar for a minute or so to let the stroll unfold at a more leisurely pace.  I may even give him one of those floppy hats with the brim in the front that was one of  the more ridiculous accoutrements of the 70's funk era.

So, he's "optimistic" I guess, but also oblivious.  Gilmour's guitar soars in overhead like an F-16 fighter and starts strafing the street and buildings with heavy fire.  Debris is flying up all around our guy and he does not even notice as he continues to stride confidently down the street.  Trash cans are exploding, glass windows are shattering, a dog is hightailing it down an alleyway to escape the carnage, but our guy is unfazed.  Listen to the beginning of the song again and tell me you don't envision this scene unfolding as clearly as I did.

Now that I've fully formed this movie in my mind by putting it into words, it occurs to me that my subconscious has created a metaphor for the extremes embodied by the Vietnam War and the Hippie movement.  On one side were young people with absolutely no freedom, following orders to kill and destroy.  On the other side were young people who eschewed authority and absolutized freedom, even freedom from responsibility.  This tension resides in my very head and pleads with the universe, "What do you want from me?"

And the universe replies, "Balance."


***

Like a Drink of Water

Like a desert oasis
for the busy bedouin
is a hug in the midst
of life's stressors.

Like a drink of water
for the wilderness explorer
is a kind word from
unexpected quarters.

Like a morsel of bread
to the famished farmer
is the smile of a
friend and colleague.


***

The Visionary

He was a visionary, and by that
I mean he wore bifocal glasses,
but not just any glasses, rimless
ones that were suspended be-
fore his face by shear force
of will, which is not technically
true, but sounds good in a poem.
And did I mention he was a poet
whose words and rhymes came
out perfect every time (for lack
of an editor), well, at least he was
a man and it was snowing in the
picture, of that you can be sure.


***

Remembering Family

This is how I will always remember them,
Anya as the baby, Elias as the little boy,
and Greta full of doggy exuberance.
They are not dead, to be remembered
in that way, but they are not me,
and it seems I have not always done
my best to get around this separation
imposed by clinging bits of stardust.
Greta is farthest along, 84 in dog years,
and likely the first to go into the mystery.
I come in second, having just turned 47.
I think I must be past the halfway point,
probably well past, as I slouch and sigh.
The picture captures something vital to
who I am, who I want to be, who I will be.
What bright shining souls reside in these
bodies of varying size and temperament!

They are my lot, they are my love, they are my life.



***

I Will Not Write

Today I will not write.  Instead, I will look through my photos and dream up ways of manipulating them using some apps and my imagination.  Something in the photo will dictate the story it will tell.  It is usually my kids that I find so a-muse-ing and they are ready subjects for photo-snapping.

A crop will rid it of the extraneous information not necessary for the story, things that distract the eye from seeing what I want it to see.  If it is not too busy and there is the right amount of contrast b/w light and dark, I may use a black and white treatment to further reduce the  distractions of odd and varied colors.  Black and whites have been some of my most beloved images.

If the color is the thing, it may be too orangey or not intense enough, things easily fixed by adjusting the warmness and saturation.  Is there something front and center that needs to pop out of the picture?  Well then, there is a subtle vignetting that can be done around that central figure, but not too much, don't want to look amateurish.  All of these things can be done with a straight forward photo editing program or app.

But, sometimes that is only the beginning of the fun.  There are a dizzying number of filters that can be applied to varying effects, to make it look older, weirder, or more wonderful in fantastical ways.  It is a creative spark that flew off my newborn son eleven years ago and lit on my heart, setting my imagination on fire...  Oh wait, I just wrote.

***

Seeing Stars

It was a warm and breezy night outside of my army base in South Korea.  I had just finished teaching an English class in the small town of Dongducheon and was out on a walk with two of my students.  One was a Korean Army officer and the other a female display designer who worked in the small mall inside my base.  We wandered the streets until quite late and ended up sitting in a circle on a patch of grass just under the imposing Indian statue of the 2nd Infantry Division.  

Our conversation meandered for quite some time until interrupted by someone bellowing in a drunken manner.  Coming around the corner from the direction of downtown was an imposing but obviously intoxicated Korean Marine in uniform accompanied by another Korean man in civilian clothes.  We watched with some amusement as he swayed and blustered his way down the sidewalk yelling at any American within earshot.  His friend had the unenviable task of trying to steer him away from trouble.

I guess it should have been obvious he was looking for a fight, but I had the unshakeable conviction that no one meant to do me harm.  I had put myself in many iffy situations during my time in Korea and had come out unscathed, convinced I was invulnerable if not invisible.  My Korean companions were a little less sure of the situation and suggested we get up and go elsewhere.  I assured them I was not scared as the uncharacteristically large Korean male stumbled my way.  I did not look at him though I knew he was following the sidewalk that wound around the base entrance and passed only a few feet from where we sat under the statue.

I tried to resume our conversation and for a few moments it was quiet again.  When I heard him again it was very close and just to my back left side.  As I turned my head to look up at where the noise was coming from, I briefly saw a large hand descending fast and hard.  It connected with the side of my head whipping me around and down to the ground.  The world disappeared as my eyes stopped working and all became black, followed by little flashes of light like brilliant stars twinkling in the night sky.  My brain was rebooting.  

Dazed, I pushed myself back up into a sitting position and heard my male companion yelling at the Marine and his friend.  As my eyesight started to clear I saw him grab the Marine's leg and lift it up while pushing him back and off balance.  He then yelled at the friend, telling him to get this guy out of here.  The Korean girl's eyes had grown as large as saucers.  "Are you OK?" She asked.  I smiled and told her I was fine, though I was still in a bit of a fog and felt a little nauseous as well.  It's little wonder that the blow didn't kill me and surely there was a lesson there for me to learn.  Unfortunately, it took several more years, getting married, and having kids before it truly sunk in.  Denial is a son of a gun.

***

The Things They Carried

I am reading Tim O'brien's "The Things They Carried" and just learned that he was 43 years old when he began writing this collection of stories of his time as an infantryman in Vietnam.  The strange thing is, it was three years ago that I took up the pen to begin writing about the things I remembered and I am 46.  I'm thinking there must be some kind of developmental switch that gets thrown in your brain soon after turning 40.  He perfectly describes my experience with this metaphor:

"But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.  You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present.  The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up in your head, where it goes in circles for awhile, then pretty soon the imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets.  As a writer, all you can do is pick up a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you."

Sometimes these streets are well demarcated and pull me into the flow easily.  Sometimes it is a narrow back way that is hard to follow but compelling to the point I feel I have to try and work it out.

I've noticed that the flow is most full and true when I allow myself to be vulnerable, to look on my younger self with some degree of pity and compassion.  So much of the pain and loneliness of growing up was covered over by denial which was what kept me from writing for so long.  All of those years I wanted to write, but was afraid to concretize my experiences in words.  It's like I wanted the water to flow under the bridge.  I fought the urge to bottle it, afraid of what I might find.

Like O'brien, I have to carry out these ideas mostly in a fiction-nonfiction hybrid because memory is patchy and there are gaps to fill if I want to capture the essence of what I remember.  Unlike O'brien, this is not a full time gig and I only have rare moments to catch-as-catch-can.  But I think it is important to make the effort.  It was Socrates who said, "the unexamined life is not worth living" or at least I think he said that.  My memory is not always all that good.


***

Clock Man and the Infinity Witch

Inspired by Elias's story The Clock Man

They had met before,
Clock Man and
the Infinity Witch,
several times, in fact.
The struggle was real
and it was intense,
waged through all
space and time.
He was into dividing and
she was into multiplying.
Her powers made
his clock face spin,
an attack of timefulness
resembling timelessness
in a way that frustrated
his need to assert limits.
He tried to capture her
in a net of days, even
an explosion of years,
but she off-stepped them
in the time it takes
to say "Death has died."
Clock Man's days were numbered.

***

Dair Mar Elia has Fallen

I stood in the monastery courtyard on the outskirts of Mosul
and watched the blackbirds fly silently over my head,
the war quickly forgotten, like a bad dream upon awakening.
They did not bring me bits of bread as they did St. Elias,
but instead dropped morsels of memory, missing my
two year old son and his mother many a thousand miles away.
Like a sentry, I wandered the high walls and looked out upon
a graveyard of military vehicles rusting in a nearby field.
I visited the cells where prayers could be felt echoing down
the centuries despite cycles of violence and destruction.
Ten years later I learn it has been utterly destroyed
with no stone left to sit upon another, like a piece of
lunar landscape dropped from the sky, devoid of grass
for grazing, the blackbirds gone to find another place to rest.


***

The Tether

It felt like his luck was running out,
tether let out inch by inch, year by year,
anchored in the bedrock of the remote past
when his beliefs were unshakeable.

If things got rough he would give it a tug
to feel the familiar tension and sigh deeply,
content that, if nothing else, he was secure.
Until, mid-journey, his life began to unravel.

The rope lay limp in his white knuckled fist,
heart sinking like a stone, eyes wet and weary,
his attempts to control his destiny waylaid
by Grace burning with a white hot fire.


***

I am GI Joe

Some time in the mid-seventies I had a GI Joe doll that I loved like the little brother I'd never had.  And by little, I mean ten inches tall with a Kung fu grip.  He symbolized the fullest degree of manhood to my small brain with his khaki military attire, beard, and shiny cut muscles.  I also had one of those small square booklets with a 45 record that you could follow with a *ding* for each turn of the page.  In this highly abbreviated adventure, GI Joe infiltrates an island on a rubber raft and battles a giant cobra guarding the thing he'd come to get which escapes my memory.  He wore his black skull cap that was visually contiguous with his black beard and mustache.  In my feverish imagination I saw myself as attaining this ideal when I reached full adulthood.

It snowed today and I had to take Elias to his tutoring session.  I grabbed a coat and a hat with little thought to any fashion ramifications that might come from what was at hand.  I dropped him off and then drove to a nearby Barnes & Noble to hang out and wait for him.  As I walked past the plate glass windows I was confronted by a life sized GI Joe mimicking my every movement.  This man was older, skinnier, and with glasses, but otherwise shockingly similar in appearance to that long forgotten doll.  Yes, more than forty years later and I have attained the appearance of that man who lassoed a giant cobra with an electrified cable to kill it and gain his prize.  My prize is in attaining the vision of a five year old's dream in whatever feeble form.  You're welcome, little 1975 version of Aaron Haney.


***

Diner Dreams

***

The planets align
in the diner lights
A litmus test of
days and nights
An inner flow of
musts and mights
Mapping a 'scape
of unseen sights

***