Arlington National Cemetery

Big grocery store parking lot

the straight white lines reminded me of

Arlington National Cemetery…

one after another after another after another after another

...then one more after another after another after…

little white crosses to the horizon and up to the sky

under the stars under the sun

under the grass under the dirt

under the rain and snow

under the eternal sun and moon

keeping watch

day fades to night

and night gives way to day

some things are forever

rest in peace

I went to Arlington National Cemetery once

with my family

my father left the car headlights on

at the end of the day

the battery was dead

seemed apropos

Late Winter Snow

I walked around in it...it wasn’t the powdery kind good for good skiing, I was too poor for that, or flopping down and making snow angels but I was too old for that now anyway, and it wasn’t the good packing type for snowballs and evil looking snowmen with spray paint caps for giant eyes and menacing mouths like we used to make staring at our neighbors who we didn’t like...it was early March now, a soppy sloppy muddy ruddy month when the farmers get ready for planting...soybeans, hay, wheat, and cucumbers...onions, potatoes, snap beans and sweet corn for summer eating with cooked out barbecue chicken...like they say, lt don’t get no better than that...it had been warmer the last couple of days and now it was a wet snow—the kind that if you fell in, you’d get up wet...a slushy messy snow...not good for playing football in or sledding or sneaking onto the utility easement when the snow was good and throwing snowballs at cars as they went by—if they slowed down or stopped—QUICK run between houses and into the safety of a friend's garage--pre-teens sitting around and passing around a bottle of beer stolen from his dad’s beer fridge and gawk at centerfolds of his old man’s Playboy magazines that he kept ‘hidden’ in there until the danger passed...the cars had to go around the block to look for us giving us enough time to hide...it was too far for them to get out of the car and cross the snowy field and come after us like a Panzer tank traversing the Russian landscape during Operation Barbarossa from where they were HAHA...but here and now out of my aunt and uncle's white clapboard house with the glass block basement windows after roast beef dinner with mashed potatoes and hot buttered rolls and green beans and apple pie for dessert...apple pie always reminds me of July 4th and barbecues and fireworks that boom and smoke and hiss and explode into bright eye splitting colors that everybody oohs and aahs over...and didn’t have any business being served this time of the year...the men folk were watching some basketball game on tv—Celtics and somebody—I didn’t like basketball and still don’t and my uncle had what I think was one of the prototypes when they started making tv’s...some old Philco black and white 17 inch [?] model with rabbit ears...I needed some air and someplace more private to break wind and get rid of that bloated ‘I just gained ten pounds’ feeling in my overstuffed stomach... I pulled the heavy wooden side door and pushed the torn screen door and stepped out on the welcome mat and felt a slap of cold but not uncomfortable air...air just cold enough to be refreshing...clear pointed icicles dripping from the gutter...this was the time of the year downtown when ice would fall from the skyscrapers and injure or kill people...I sized up the long driveway, dirt, gravel and dirty gray snow piles and the wire fence that ran the length of it—in the big front yard was one of those ceramic little black men holding a lantern...then went across the street where there was a ball field with advertising on the outfield walls and enclosed dugouts...nobody around so I slipped through an opening and walked over by the pitchers mound—just stood there a spell thinking nothing...just looking at the field and bleachers draped in melting snow and then started thinking spring thoughts of ball games and no jackets required and upcoming summer vacations in the car.

She Was Like Pure Mercury

Exotic woman she was, she wasn’t who she said she was or pretended to be or not to be, but that was just a mere technicality...with those eyes, you didn’t really care...you just wanted to drown in the ocean that she was...you didn’t know if you could trust her but you did anyway...the nearer you got to her, the farther you seemed to be...your mind tried to tell you but the phone to your heart was out of order...the communiques weren’t getting through either...one thing for sure, she wasn’t gonna be who you wanted her to be...she was her and that was that...she was her own woman--impulsive, changing her mind on a whim, leaving you twisting in the wind, telling you yes and then no and then yes and then no again...that’s just her way...frustrating, infuriating, captivating--she had it all...and who knew you had such a forgiving nature hmm…?...the first time you saw her she was all shiny and shimmering in that quicksilver dress and was pure mercury...she was beautiful but maybe she was also poisonous but you just had to find out even if the others warned you...it was like she just walked out of a fashion magazine spilling over the dance floor with all eyes on her and wanting to be with her...you asked her to dance and she gave you a deep look and accepted...you were always a man of confidence...that was your first mistake...the spider invited you into her web...a web of promises, a web of ecstasy, a web of deception, a web of charm...a magnetic presence that attracted all...she cooed and whispered in a deep and low smoky voice that said everything, but didn’t say nothing--her voice could melt steel--and her perfume committed murder...she wasn’t the kind to give herself away but you said the hell with it and got involved with her anyway and true to form she played you like a violin--a real Carnegie Hall virtuoso getting whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it...like the night she told you she loved you passionately--then the next day she was indifferent...when you said “You told me you loved me last night”, she coldly stared ahead and said “Oh yes, but that was last night. Today is a new day.”...was she being coy...just toying with you?...basically anything she wanted, she got it and you became wrapped around her finger...she let you know in her subtle woe is me demeanor that she had a few debts she was concerned about and the good man that you are ‘took care of’ a few bills she had but it was only money...you would have done just about anything for her and she knew it...she was as intoxicating as a case of the finest German schnapps...purring like a Mercedes and you couldn’t wait to take her for a ride on the autobahn and see how fast you could go...maybe you could corral her, maybe she would change...a fool’s dream...she wasn’t going to change and if you didn’t play along, she’d find somebody else in an instant that would...eyes discreetly on the prowl for someone who might be able to provide a little bit better than her current fling...and that’s all you were...a fling, the flavor of the month, today’s fashion...she was a habit you couldn’t break even though you knew you’d probably wind up in rehab while she laughed and went off to Paris for the summer and into the arms of another lover who no doubt wouldn’t have any better luck with her than you did.

Hawaii Oh-O

It was the Monday to Fridayness of it all that was so damn depressing…

routine routinely pounding my brain into a routine day after day;

lifting boxes, totes, crates, pallets…

working in the freezer section where it was 0 degrees

chucking boxes of beef patties and french fries onto metal carts

that were unfriendly and never had nothing to say...not my idea

of what I’d be doing when I came down to the sunny south to work in…

I could of stayed home and worked in the cold...this crap was killing my spirit

my back was dead tired like somebody who stayed up all night for three nights in a row working on a book and taking Benzedrine and drinking beaucoup pots of coffee…

which I would rather been doing BTW but I had rent to pay…

I was still young, still full of dreams and empty of money…

so scheming and dreaming, I got this great idea...save some money and go to Hawaii

for surely life had to better out there; among the palms and the hula girls…

maybe catch a Don Ho show or something...catch some waves at Waikiki beach…

so I put my head down, plowed through it for awhile...I didn’t go out hardly at all

and I even cut down on my liquor intake, which I can tell you was really rough…

finally, I saved some cash and I borrowed most and off I went…

naive and full of stupid dreams and illusions…

it was pretty cool for the first couple weeks

—HULA HULA HULA bring me some more cold Kona beer

and then reality set in…Dum, Dum, Dum, DUM…..

hell, I had to find a way to pay the bills there, and the bills were higher…

I looked around for something better but here I was

moving boxes in some hot as hell warehouse...struggling to pay the bills…

I thought they might need some help at Hawaii Five-O

but Steve McGarrett was nowhere to be found and didn’t return my calls…

I was pure perfection

a ne'er-do-well in the midwest, the deep south and now in Hawaii

the only difference being now I was a ne’er-do-well with a sunburn…

I was geographically consistent...hell, I didn’t even like poi my boy...for fun, I could take a drive and see what was left of the sugar refineries that were drying up…

or I could hop on The Bus; ride around Oahu killing the day away and I did that a few days…

I should of known better what the hell?...you have to try...after a year of that, I got this

...a plane ticket and after a night of mai-tais, I came back home to two feet of snow

on the ground, but I didn’t care…

could have spent time kickin’ around Honolulu in a cheap aloha shirt

the ones where the pocket pattern don’t match the rest of the shirt

but what was the point?...I wasn’t any happier there than I was when I was home

S.S. Valencia

There was the wreck of a ship

the SS Valencia it was the name

1906 off the coast of British Columbia Canada

a steamer built in 1882 for excursions

New York City to Venezuela and back again…

sank in an area of water called

‘The Graveyard of the Pacific’...

a particularly treacherous area…

waters that captains dreaded navigating in rough weather…

on this particular night

the weather had turned rougher than rough

high wind and low visibility…

celestial observations that is

navigation by the stars impossible

...the Valencia struck a reef and then some rocks

tearing a deathly hole in the hull—

ABANDON SHIP!

seven lifeboats launched

several capsized; one lost entirely

some survived—many did not…

years a clear

reports of an old lifeboat with eight skeletons

found in a nearby sea cave…

an attempt to retrieve it

unsuccessful!…

unexplainable stories still unexplained…

those of local fishermen

reporting lifeboats were seen being rowed

on the water one fog enshrouded evening

by possible skeletons of the Valencia's victims…

lost souls disappearing into a cloud of mist

sightings of the ship

like a ghostly apparition

making its way down the coast

1933–lifeboats from the Valencia was found adrift

no skeletons aboard

Smarter Than The Average Bear

He thought himself somewhat of an intellectual--that is smarter than the average bear Boo-Boo..he was thought of by some snarks as the human 8-ball because he thought he had all the answers--he wanted to talk about Hemingway, or Mozart, or some psychological topic or metaphysical gobbledygook...the only problem was that he was alone...there wasn’t anybody he knew who fit that bill...oh there once was a guy he knew who left and moved to Idaho to be a train conductor...they used to have some good talks, but he took the 8:05 out of town one-way...he didn’t care about discussing who the third string quarterback was for the college town football team GO STATE!...so he sat dazed in his cubicle, or confused in his car while stopped at a red light as to why the latest turn of events turned that way, or in a recliner in his house, alone in thought and lost to this world...he realized it was the circles that he ran in, or more truthfully didn’t run in...he didn’t run in circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, pentagons, hexagons, septagons, octagons, or any other kind of gon...his ‘type’ was gon gon gon...gon once, gon twice, SOLD!...to nobody he ever knew...he was an avid reader like Mr. Bemis and had a good working knowledge of many things...however none of this working knowledge ever got put to use and this love of reading did not translate into a love of going to school and studying...he tried college but quit after sorta almost finishing one year if you don’t count incompletes...he would’ve passed English class if he hadn’t passed out in the hallway on finals day...annnnddd he never went back to complete the course of course...guess that’s what he got for getting totally wasted at a baseball game the night before which wasn’t too intellectual...he left school and did what most young people in that situation do, got a job...actually, he got more than a job, he got several jobs; jobs that neither interested him or that would lead anywhere he wanted to go...drift, drift, drift...here, there, anywhere...to dead end jobs with dead minded people...he never saw himself in the same way...people who he was sure about having no common interests or having anything to offer from a high-minded conversational standpoint...he coulda lowered his sights but he couldn’t see it...so he drifted from one dead-ass job to another...it wasn’t until later in his life that he thought that being a college professor might have been a good job for him, walking around the campus as Professor talking with students and fellow teachers...mixing it up in the world of academia, among the intellegensia...alas however, he was now too old to pursue that ambition and like some of his other ambitions, it most likely would have ended in abysmal failure...he wanted to be but was a never-was...he gave up and got a cheap room in an old motel and worked part time as a caretaker for oh, I don’t know...some kind of rec building or something...he sank into the unmade bed of oblivion drinking the loneliness and pain away...they found his body after a week or so when the neighbors complained of a bad smell...but then that’s what his whole life was in his humble opinion.

Mysterious Car On Desolate Road

I looked out my bedroom window

it was late at night--a car had stopped on

the desolate country road

running in front of my house

300 E

Headlights on

Just sitting there

For ten minutes or more

Very mysterious

scare inducing

What's he doing?

On his phone?

Drinking a beer?

Smoking a joint?

Planning a crime?

a murder?

a murder spree?

Maybe he's just lost…

No, that can't be it/too simple

after an agonizing wait

slowly the car starts moving again

gravel crunching in a menacing manner under the tires

red evil eyes tail lights

gradually receding into the dark

shutting their eyes

I don’t sleep well that night

Dark Parked Car

Sitting in a dark parked car waiting in the dark parking lot for the damned and waiting for an angel to save me and watching what bears watching in this dark mind...half moon way up high in the sky...I swear it winked at me...flashing red and green lights overhead...the 8:15 non-stop to LaGuardia maybe...across the street, a suite hotel with a sweet room on the third floor illuminated and where I can see the television flashing through the window shears...no sound, no idea of what is showing--just colors flashing and light going from bright to dim and dim to bright...trying to imagine who might be in that room...maybe a business woman or man relaxing after a day of presentations, meetings, or whatever they do...road warriors...or it could be a Dad, Mom, and kids here on vacation—probably not much different than mine was years and years ago when the world was a kinder place and we visited some obscure aunt and uncle in Miami Beach who I don’t remember ever hearing much about again...before interstate travel, it meant driving on state roads through two horse, one horse, and no horse towns...all I remember are slivers of moments swimming in a hotel pool—not really swimming but floating with some water wings buckled on me so I wouldn’t drown...but it didn’t matter...I dove in the shallow end and drowned in the deep end later on in life...and that they had three little dogs...poodles I think—I was four at the time and the back of the camera in my mind was opened so a lot of the pictures got underexposed or didn’t develop at all...back in the car waiting still...people pass on the sidewalk below talking in voices that are too loud and don’t give a damn if anyone is listening and cursing about things foreign to me...what passes for modern conversation these days is one swear word after another...it’s a damn shame people don’t know how to express themselves without swearing anymore, but I guess it makes you sound badass...I had a cousin who was like nine or so that kept swearing...his mother (a different aunt) one time made him wash his mouth out with soap after he swore—afterwards, she said she asked if he’d learned his lesson about not swearing after that...she said he replied “Yeah, but I can’t get all this damn soap out of my mouth”...little further down the street there’s a big building that looks inviting with laid back orange lights on the side of it..and a hundred or so balconies, all with the same kind of stuff on them with only minor variations—bicycles, grills, cheap plastic chairs to sit on and quietly get stoned while getting blinded watching sunsets that promise a better day tomorrow but never keep their promise...winter wind full of chill blows cold through the open car window but I don’t care and it feels good anyway...the smell of French fries wafting through the air and making me hungry...music from passing cars thumping as they pass into the night like little planets spinning on four wheels in their own galactic world, a musica universalis…walkers walk through the shadows of the parking lot lost in their own world and thinking...who knows?...my passenger returns and gets in the car with her package and she smiles and we go to...who knows?

Monte Cassino Don't Have A Casino

Monte Cassino which don’t have a casino

or at least it didn’t used to..

haven’t been there lately…

No blackjack roulette baccarat pai gow

it’s a small town that lies to the south of Rome

80 miles or so where all roads lead which is handy if you’re going to Rome…

(a friend of mine just went to Rome and wasn’t that impressed FWIW)..

1943; Allied army attacks left it in shambles…

all monastic buildings were destroyed…

In the big one—World War II, the hill of Monte Cassino

was a main portion of a German defensive line

The Gustav line it was called after some guy named Gustav I presume

guarding the approaches to Rome which the Allies were aiming for…

The Allies didn’t want to bomb the monastery itself being the nice guys there were

but they were unsure if there were any German soldiers inside the abbey

using it as cover…

There were two failed attacks at a huge cost of life

but with still no clear evidence that it wasn’t

the Allies said the hell with it and called for air strikes

directly on the monastery itself

...almost 1200 tons of high explosives and incendiary bombs were dropped on the abbey...KA-BOOM...in fact, several KA-BOOMS--KA-BOOM BOOM BOOM

BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM-BOOM KA-BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

after the bombs fell, all the rubble of the monastery from the bombing made excellent cover for German soldiers who then used it WOOF…

the monastery lay in ruins

over 200 Italians were using the abbey as a shelter

they got killed

...it is said that on the day after the bombing at sunrise--

most of the civilians still alive decided to leave…

there were only about 40 people left... six of those being monks

yet more artillery barrages, renewed bombing and attacks from Indian troops followed...

German soldiers claim to have seen ghosts milling about the ruins

there’s a lot of ghosts wandering around europe

Peru

I visited some friends in Lima, Peru and it was six hours of knees rubbing the seat in front of me hell and eating a hamburger at a Carl Jr’s during a layover in Panama City...landed in Lima--greeted with a tour book by a cute young woman dressed in a Peruvian costume; something like you’d see in a movie if they made movies about young Peruvian women but they don’t...I wanna live with a cinnamon girl and eventually did...they didn’t give them out to all the people coming off the plane; just ones who looked like they were gringos out of place which despite my efforts, I evidently was classified as...on my way to the luggage area, the language, the signs, all of them strange to this non speaker of Spanish...as I walked, bright neon sign reached out and grabbed me...I looked over and it was a Dunkin’ Donuts restaurant...it was like a junkie finding a fix...got my luggage and headed over for some Boston Crème donuts and some coffee...reunited with home through my taste buds...visited with my friends for a long time at their casa...the first night, I must have gotten to bed around 2:30 a.m. and as I tried to sleep, music was playing loudly from a house nearby...you could hear people yelling and laughing...like a beer commercial and I could see the scene looking at the ceiling in my bedroom like some weird kind of drive-in movie screen...even though the music was loud, it didn’t bother me like it would back home...maybe because I couldn’t understand the words and that didn’t bother me like it would if I knew the songs...I fell asleep to the rhythm of a Peruvian beat...Ticos zipped back and forth across the streets; evidently traffic lanes and signs were merely suggestions...it was like every black and white picture I ever saw of some South American country in an old encyclopedia that had come alive...there were lights and sounds and movements everywhere...the small bodega that sold fresh bread that we ate for breakfast and a late night snack...but everywhere you looked, you could see signs of the dreaded American culture invading...fancy shopping malls; upscale overpriced restaurants that you could find back home, flea markets that had the dreaded N.Y. Yankees hats and other American junk...as time went by, I tried different foods...pollo a la brasa and arroz chaufa which kicked the ass of any other I had ever eaten...we also had chicharrones which is pork on bread that some guy on a bicycle delivered to the house...had a zipper on my cheap leather jacket from K-Mart break...I played gypsy fortune teller and saw its future in a Lima city dumpster but was told to take it to a local market to get it fixed...handed it over to a guy who looked suspicious but repaired shoes, jackets...he told me to come back in an hour...as I turned it over, I thought goodbye jacket, I’ll never see you again...but an hour later I picked it up; the zipper was fixed and the jacket received a reprieve from the governor...it worked perfectly and he charged me the equivalent of five U.S. dollars...well, my trip ended and I went to the airport...sadder than sad to be leaving...walking to the gate to catch my plane and my eyes were again captured by the neon of that Dunkin’ Donuts sign...this time though, it was the enemy...no longer an oasis; instead, an intruder as so much of American culture has been around the world...passed it up and caught my plane back to the evil empire.

Ships and Planes

Ships

People who are desperate or anxious jump into relationships

sometimes sprain an ankle or get on the wrong ship entirely

and sometimes it's hard as hell to get off…

not me, I stay away from those rat infested docks, dubious ports and seedy warehouses…

two ships passing in the night are far better./././

leave each other alone and there won’t be so many shipwrecks a.k.a./ bad relationships…

these kind of ships wind up on the rocks or aground on a sandbar and their stuck there…

I have an intense love affair going on with chocolate bars

Arby’s Roast Beef Sandwiches, cheap vodka and schnapps

I've never been happier in my life

Planes

Blue and red bird flying at 33k

take me with into the silver and gray

away away

east or west I don’t care chum

I don’t

wherever you’re going

I’m your passenger

into the stratosphere ionosphere

levitating

sailing

on a sea of off white foam

and 20 foot invisible waves

around the curve of the earth

banking off the sunbeams

ricocheting off the milky white

don’t touch down

just keep on going

going home going alone

going home alone

alone not to moan

just to rest in peace

Softball Man

My mind and life was in a brown paper bag with an empty bottle in it, so I’m off to get a fifth since I ran out..but honestly, I’d take a third of a fourth...that damned dog must of drank most of it again because there’s no way I finished that by myself already...either that or it evaporated overnight when I wasn’t watching...liquor has a way of doing that around my place...yeah, that’s it...it’s evaporating...I didn’t do good when I took chemistry, but there must be some formula that’s causing that to happen...my apartment smells like a distillery on double shifts...even the roaches wobble around the floor intoxicated by the odor...don’t even think of lighting a match to smoke or the whole place might go up...I’m on the sidewalk when I hear a loud and proud CLACK CLACK CLACK behind me...I’m thinking WTF?...is there some kind of mechanical thing from deep, dark space following me?...what is this clacking sound that is racking my brain and causing me to become discombobulated?...I turn around and it’s just one of my neighbors from the apartment complex that I’ve seen once or twice….just some old guy in his 60’s with gray hair...he looks at me sheepishly or defiantly...I’m not sure which...he’s wearing this bright as split the night neon orange baseball uniform complete with metal spikes that were making the clacking sound...he’s carrying a couple of baseball bats and a big glove...I look at him and don’t know if I should admire him for still being active at his age, or laugh at him for how ridiculous this guy looks...maybe life has passed this guy by if this softball thing is that important to him...I thought of that quote about Lenny Bruce... “There’s nothing sadder than an aging hipster”, but this guy stopped running in the hip circles generations ago and his main concern now is the broken hip which is the buzzard circling over the heads of the aged...I move to the side and let him pass and we both walk toward the parking lot...he gets into what else but a red Corvette ( a sure sign of his crisis)...CLACK CLACK CLACK...man, this guy must be in his second or third or fourth adolescence...I’m pretty sure he looked around to see if anybody was watching him and envying him as he got in...I was silently, ever so silently laughing at him and his whole machismo parade...I’m still walking to my car (definitely not a Corvette), and I see this super-hot blonde who I’ve been admiring for a while walking toward his car...she’s way too beautiful to be living in this rat hole of a complex but she does…at least temporarily until some rich guy swoops in to scoop her up...she lives several floors above all the low life guys like myself who live there and there ain’t no elevator to go up to her floor...she smiles at the old fella, which is kind of like giving him a kiss on the forehead, and then walks past the little red Corvette to this other sports car that’s low and lean and that is parked waiting for her... the guy in the car has thick, dark hair and sunglasses and looks like his name might be Marco or Antonio or something like that...he’s straight out of central casting...it’s a good thing she didn’t get into the car with the old guy or it would have been slit my wrists city.