StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. VIII

Winter's a threadworn nightgown worn too long,
The roundness of summer grown lined and thin;
Six weeks off, March still gives us hope,
The yellow of daffodil, the deep hue of tulip;
What birds survive will join the squirrels' scavage,
Rebuilding nests, making plans for family;
The space we must travel between now and then
Cannot distance us from Spring's warm promise.

A years worth of movies on Lifetime teaches
To never trust boys, especially the cute ones;
Their motives are suspect and given the chance
Most likely they'll kill you or perhaps your best friend;
But if you should date them, in any event,
Be careful, be alert, don't let them into your pants.

February raining much like March,
A slow, damp steady drizzle
Too chill to be April,
A scattered possibility of snow.

Too soon for flowers,
Too frigid for the ground,
A definite definite possibility
Of winter's angry scowl.

When I signed up for this chicken outfit,
I had cried myself to sleep the night Bobby died,
Voted for George McGovern against
Richard Nixon's and Lyndon's Viet Nam War;
I waved the flag, defended freedom of speech,
Worked with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers,
Listened to the Beatles, Stones, and Doors,
Went to bed playing Bach and Beethoven,
Watched Star Trek, Ed Sullivan, and Johnny Carson,
And took a job as an Army Civilian:
Texarkana, Stockton, the Poconos, and Chambersburg
Before settling in at the Pentagon in Virginia
To have and raise my family and be washed over
By a tidal sea change that ends up with the poet,
On Black Friday, writing verse to capture the moment
In the waning hours of two thousand ten C. E.

Tony and I never were Tony and I,
We were casual friends and little more,
Working on our teaching credential
Comparing notes how best to escape
From Sacramento State.

Our common interests, such as they were:
An occasional beer in the late California afternoon,
The usual post grad digressions and speculations
On the personal lives of professors and politicians,
And the somewhat rare personal self-medication
With various imported herbals from South East Asia;

Never Acid, never anything stronger, although
Tony did offer me some cocaine one day
While we were killing time in the teachers lounge
Among the grad students and the professors,
-- I had never seen coke up close before
And no one at the other tables seem to notice
When I declined Tony's kind offer,
Not so much because cocaine is illegal,
There are many things that are illegal, afterall,
But I did not feel a dire need to get high,
Not then, not now, not ever -- I accepted pot
When offered but never went out of my way
To do a number with anyone.

At night, after a seminar, we sometimes
Would end up at Tony's house in the suburbs
Near the Air Force base.  Tony was always having
Young airmen crash at his place for various reasons
And they always seem to repay him with grass
They had picked up on their travels: Taiwan Red,
Maui Owi, and a multitude of other distant varieties
I cannot remember; Tony kept it all labelled
In ceramic boxes sitting openly on his coffee table.
My eyes widened the first time he showed me
But Tony smiled and said quietly Don't worry, babe,
No one busts a home in middle class North Highlands;
It's not cool and simply not done.

Tony passed me a cold beer, an Oly most likely,
Then lit a joint of his own choosing and passed it to me.
Unlike Bill Clinton, I inhaled rather deeply, holding the smoke
In my lungs, repressing my cough reflex, and started to relax
-- Pot never made me high, only quite calmly relaxed,
Much like the feeling alcohol achieves before you feel
Your body begin the slow inevitable slide over the line
Between almost sober and potential nasty hangover.

We drank, we smoked, Tony taking two or three hits
For every one of mine, and we talked for an hour or more
While his basset hound sat between us on the floor;
I was young, Tony three or four years older,
Our bodies were well within our personal spaces when
Tony reached out and touched my shoulder.

I probably had encouraged him, I certainly had not run,
The beer and grass were well relaxing me,
But when Tony touched I jumped in reflex,
Only to hear Tony say I'm not going to hurt you.
To this day I am not sure of my intentions or what
Tony's might have been but that's where we ended that night.

Looking back, I can only wonder, where I would be
If I had allowed things to follow naturally and not
Given the impression that I misled Tony.  He wasn't my type,
I know that now, but he was a friend and we both were lonely.
Who would have been hurt if the moment evolved?
Instead I let a chance slip to make another person happy:
I don't even know if Tony is still alive to read this apology,
The one I didn't give him that night in North Highlands.

A dusting last week,
Another next,
Forecast of snowfall
But who the hell knows?

Certainly not the weatherman
Playing with his computer
On the late night news,
He doesn't have a clue.

I eat dead chickens, cattle, and bison,
Turkeys and pigs and fish of every sort;
I've been known to kill vegetables
To go with my meat,
Carrots, potatoes, grains and other stuff;
I have devoured apples,
Pears, oranges, and bananas,
Feasted on cherries, peaches, and plums;
Even nuts are not safe from my ominivorous appetite,
I take what I need to stay alive
And make no pretense to how I survive.

I believe Grandma would've approved
If the young Michael Corleone
Had gotten into my pants
-- He was a good Sicilian boy, a war hero
Who found steady work after the war;

I doubt that I could've resisted him,
Doubt more I would have wanted to;
Smart, handsome, and good with words,
He could have talked me into anything,
Marriage, bed, or a little something
Behind the church on Sunday.

When empire falls,
Hope rises up,
Too often to be met
By another thug;

Our nation is Liberty,
Our fight, eternal,
One voice, one people
All the world around;

The Americas, Africa,
Europe and Asia,
Australia, Guam,
New Zealand
And the Phillipines,
The Mideast Tinderbox,
India and Pakistan,
Liberty is our battle cry,
Freedom our life and blood.

She screams, dies again,
The war is back, if ever left,
Ravaging her sleep and body;
The long night will not grow silent
Until she lies quiet beneath the stones
Of Arlington Cemetery;

No one will know,
No one can speak for her,
No one will care except for me
And the handful of remaining survivors
Who can not be mentioned;
But I will remember and I will bury her,
And continue to shed my tears
Until I too grow still
And no one is left who knew her
Or can vouch the ghost was once
Flesh and blood and as human
As you and I.