When I Was A Child

September 11, 2010
Reminiscent of a simpler time.

Gumby,
Gunsmoke,
no one was voted off
     Gilligan's Island;
Bozo, Batman (in gray tights);
Dragnet;
wrestling greats Bobo Brazil,
Flying Fred Curry,
The Sheik;
I always lost at marbles,
     little league baseball,
     Webeloes and Awanas;
yellow Huffy bicycle, banana seat,
     sissy bar, chopper handle bars,
     no helmet, no pads;
Detroit Tigers on the transistor radio,
Hank Williams on the console stereo;
drive-ins;
station wagon,
bench seats, seat belts not required;
black cherry Kool-Aid™,
fried oatmeal, bread pudding,
     both with raisins,
goulash, Sunday pot roast;
weeping willow in the front yard,
cherry on the side, wild apple across the fence,
rhubarb and clover.
When I was four I was allowed
to walk a quarter mile
down the tree-lined road by myself
to play with my friend Ruth.

Developing Voice

August 27, 2010
from notes on drafts:
[Develop your voice
your singular voice.
Huh?
But I have many voices.]

at last stanza:
When I'm dead will the things that I've said (written) still matter?


Developing Voice
"The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you."
          Thomas Lux, "The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently"


The black & white home movies of the early sixties
silenced my infant voice;
until the reel-to-reel recorded it again one
Christmas morning singing Jingle Bells into the taste
of the aluminum microphone.
A decade later, the tape had stretched its vocal chords
and was no longer recognizable.

I once lost my voice
in high school, auditioning for a role in “The Fantastiks.”
I sang one line and then it just stopped...
as if someone had flicked a switch or a fuse had popped
and I didn't have a penny to fix it.

I found it again
proposing pacifism, debating doctrine, singing psalms;
and again on the sidewalks for the unborn, the uninformed;
and again parading prophetic in ecstatic glossolalia utterance.

There's the voice my children have heard.
There's the voice my grandchildren hear.
There's one for the dog.

My wife knows my voice
          when I'm setting up a bad pun,
          when I'm up on my soap box,
          when I'm asking a question
          or broaching a sensitive subject.
          There is one only she knows
                    when our door is closed
                    or when we're not talking.

I have a telephone voice
and a cell phone voice:
they are different.

It actually goes up
          about half an octave
                    when I'm waiting tables.
This phenomenon seems to affect most servers.

When I try to talk to you,
what if
what if I stut...stut...stutter;
          suppose my syllables slip into lisp;
                    perhaps the words no longer exist.
And what if we don't speak the same language?
¿Y si no hablamos el mismo idioma?
Where I come from, we don't have an accent.

And when my lips are peeled back from my teeth,
and my tongue has been eaten by worms,
will my voice still be heard in the heads of my kids
when they speak to kids of their own?

Which Came First?

July 5, 2010
Just saying...


Why debate eggs?
Sperm is the real issue.

Big Bang

July 5, 2010
This started as a quick assignment in Creative Writing 238. We were instructed to quickly write a list of sounds, select one, write a descriptive paragraph. I selected "car crash" and wrote what I could remember of sounds from a car crash that I had experienced. Looking for notes to another story, I found it and noticed poetry within the text. All of the lines are pared down from the original. As I arranged the lines into a more poetic form, I saw new meaning in the words. Creation. Thus, the last stanza.


no picture before
the attenuated screeching of rubber on pavement
no visual prior
to the dull, unmetallic
                                             thud
of grillongrill
absence of images preceded
cr unc hin g of g la ss
whOOOOOOOsh
exploded into
temporarily sightless eyes

a chasm of time
interrupting
the normal flow of traffic
darkness turning around
blindly facing a new direction
dust and gas and twilight
intertwining
in the confining atmosphere

stumble out coughing
have i been in an accident?

To Everything There is a Season Suite

February 22, 2010
This started as an assignment in Creative Writing 238: take a cliche and give it fresh life. I had picked from the list "freezing to death" and wrote a poem. I liked it. I wanted to do more. So I dug out other seasonal cliches (or not so seasonal) and created a pastoral suite. The suite itself is cliche with my usual twists. From consummation and birth to the hereafter. Oh, how cliche.


Spring Has Sprung

Spring has sprung
          in a bed of love
          to the flow'ry bed
Spring has come.

Springs are sprung
          in an upstream swarm,
          a race to become
Sprung into one.

Spring has sprung
          in a seed that's sown
          to sprout and to grow,
Springing to one.

Spring! Sprung!
          fountains of the deep
          waters have broken—
Springing son.

Springs are sprung
          on the hands of time
          to the infant mind
Spring is one.


Dog Days

of summer moons
          howlings
          barkings
          yippings and yappings
          at silent sights and scents

of sniffing this and that
          and the other
          fresh smell
          stale odor
          butt hole
          connoisseur of pooh
          and all things aromatic
          master of the olfactory

of humping legs
          and pillows
          and oversized teddy bears
          anything with
          fur and four legs
          in heat

of pissing on trees
          and fences and
          grass and tires
          whatever presents
          itself as being worthy
          of being pissed upon
          for the pleasure of pissing
          piss piss piss

of chasing after
          cars
          cats
          tails
          sticks and balls
          tails
          cats
          cars

of laying about
          with nothing but
          to nip at fleas
          snooze and dream

of summer moons


Leaves: Much To Be Desired

The crowns of the deciduous morph from green to brown in varying degrees and stages of gold, pumpkin, and rust, signaling the end of endless days, portending the approach of cold and frost. From a distance, the colors mix and blend: a panoramic landscape destined for desktops and calendars.

Dun branches and twigs clutch each changing leaf, holding it high until, fingers splayed, it lets go to reach for something higher.

Now they're scattered all over the lawn. They need to be raked and bagged. Even with gloves, blisters form before the first pile is crammed and compressed into thick brown paper bags. It's only natural to want to jump in.


Freezing To Death

…his breath
                              hung in the air
                              like a ghost.
The heavens likewise with stone gray expiration
entombed the barren countryside.

His arms
          wrapped about his torso
                    like winding sheets.
Tree limbs creaked
                    like old bones
          in the flurry.

His feet
buried in his boots,
frigid markers in the snow.
The ground experiencing the last stages of rigor
interred the pastoral setting for a seasonal eternity.


Hope Springs, Eternal

Better than Hot Springs, Eternal.

The Leaning Tree

January 200?
I wrote this one night while cooking at the Waffle House. I wanted to have something to enter in the Post & Courier and South Carolina Arts Commission sponsored South Carolina Fiction Project and the deadline was only 2 days away. I wasn't able to work on it again until the day of the deadline. I spent all day editing and re-writing, managing to get it posted 5 minutes before the post office closed. I didn't win.


The Leaning Tree

          He rode out on Purpose, the gray-white mare he’d left on the farm three years ago when he went away to school. The sun had already been up for an hour, hidden by a ceiling of slate gray clouds. Probably going to snow. His breath hung in the still air like a ghost. The only sound, the muffled crunch of snow under the horse’s hooves. Everyone in the house was still asleep. Spent. Unprepared for the effort of the past few days; stress they thought they had prepared for.
          The horse sauntered through the farmyard; past the rusting F150; past the bare clothesline, tiny icicles dripping off the sagging lines; past the dog pens, now empty; through the already open gate to the woods on the other side of the field.
          The sweet scent of pine caressed his nostrils like a friendly cat. Purpose gingerly picked her way along the deeply rutted two-track cut by Dad's Ford, the John Deere, and mother nature. The road wound and forked through the forty acres of forest that surrounded the main house and farmyard. He and his three older brothers, all of them moved away from home and starting their own families, had hunted deer and ‘coon and rabbit with their dogs out here. Large mounds of snow-covered branches and roots were scattered in clearings on either side of the road. Dad had said something about selling some of the trees to help pay Mom’s hospital bills.
          A year and a half ago he had learned about his mother’s cancer. His first year at State had been more intense than he'd expected, but he kept to the books. Being the first to go to college made him push harder. Now with Mom gone it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Maybe I should just quit. Save time and money. Come home and help Dad.
          The two-track rolled out to an open field. Brown and broken stalks poked up through the snow. The bleached gray slat barn was supposed to protect the aging John Deere from the weather, but little mounds of snow sat on top of the huge tires and seat. He had made some weak promises to his father to fix the roof. Animal tracks criss-crossed the whitened field like impatient doodles. A hawk circled over the far end, the future looking bleak for some rabbit or squirrel.
          The cornfield butted against the apple orchard. Harvested fruit (the farm’s main source of income for over two generations) was now applesauce or cider vinegar. Large empty crates, stacked rank and file, stood around the perimeter of the orchard; a makeshift fortress. Smaller crates cluttered the orchard floor; some stacked two and three high near the trunks, others strewn about carelessly under the unprotecting canopy of the leafless trees. As a boy, he had learned hard work picking up drops. And he had watched as Mexican migrant workers worked even harder to pick the red ripe fruit for their few dollars; all seemingly content.
          Leaving the fruitless trees, the land slowly sloped up. A small ridge—open, unplowed, and left to its own. Dried up Queen Anne’s Lace stabbed the snow here and there. Clumps of dead grasses not flattened by the snow peeked out at the world. A single maple tree stood at the top of the ridge. Three main trunks rose to form a wide canopy. The trunk to his left had been recently struck by lightning, its deadened limbs bent to the earth.

          He slid from the saddle to the ground and let the reins drop.
          When I was a kid I used to pack up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, and pop to eat out here.
          I smoked my first...and last...cigar by this tree. I thought I was so cool, until I coughed my lungs out and puked my guts up.
          My back was against this rough bark when Darlene first kissed me. A few weeks later we discovered more than a kiss under this tree.
          My hunting dog, Bones, is buried right over there.
          Mostly, I just came out here to watch the clouds slide by and the breeze blow the grass.
          Yeah, this is where I made my decision to go to school upstate. Stayed out here until it got dark. Mom was so proud that I was going to college. Any college.

          And in the shelter of naked branches, he leaned back and wept. For as long as it took, he wept and sobbed. Puffy snowflakes floated down to frozen earth. Wiping his chapped cheeks, he took the reins of Purpose and walked her home.

Turning Night Into Day

March 2009
Trident Technical College, Copyright ©2009

This was written as an assignment for my English Comp I class at Trident Technical College. My instructor suggested that I submit it to the new school student anthology.

          The atrocities committed upon the Jewish peoples in the early twentieth century are widely known and well documented. Elie Wiesel is one voice among thousands declaring the inhumanity of those times upon his people and himself. At the impressionable age of 16, he suffered the loss of his father to starvation at the Buchenwald concentration camp, as well as the deaths of his mother and younger sister in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Wiesel vowed to not speak for ten years of the torturous brutalities he and ten thousand other prisoners endured (Hurst and Pavlick). His silence ended when he penned Un di Velt Hot Geshvihn (And the World Was Silent), the original Yiddish version of Night in 1954 (McDonald and Trotter 506). Night asserts that what Elie Wiesel witnessed as a young teenager in the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald camps was the numbing effect of constant brutality and the threat of individual annihilation upon social conscience and personal faith. What he also recorded, however, as seen through the refining lens of hindsight, was the glimmer of hope within his people and possible redemption pictured in shadowed Christian symbolism.
          In one chapter from Wiesel's account, the prisoners of the death camp are so numbed to the indescribable brutality around them that they are not merely unconcerned bystanders, but have also become willing participants. Wiesel depicts this condition when he tells of a young prisoner from Warsaw who is to be hanged for the crime of stealing. As the verdict is being read and the condemned youth stands defiantly before his executioners, their ability to be affected as a whole is demonstrated in the whispered question of a prisoner named Juliek: “Do you think this ceremony'll be over soon? I'm hungry…” (Wiesel 507). During this grave moment, Juliek's regard is for the prisoners' only meal: soup. Soup is their life. It is their sole concern. Soup is the currency of life. To preserve their own life “Two prisoners helped […] for two plates of soup” (Wiesel 507). The other prisoners do not seem to mind that their fellows assist. It has been said that if you do not resist evil you assist it. This saying speaks of this moment as the prisoners are no longer merely observers but have become actively involved in their own genocide.
          Wiesel, on the other hand, though “no longer troubled” by the “thousands who had died […] in the crematory ovens” (Wiesel 507), experiences a re-awakening, if only briefly, of the threat to his life individually. The sheer numbers of the atrocities committed behind the closed doors of the crematory are desensitizing. “But this one […] he overwhelmed me.” (Wiesel 507, emphasis added) Wiesel writes that as he stood watching the Warsaw youth: “I could hear my heart beating” (Wiesel 507, emphasis added). Wiesel's reaction to this single life and his awareness of his own evokes a scenario in which he appears to feel that “This is a person. A vibrant individual. Soon to die. I am an individual. Alive. Death, brutal death, is a very real threat to me.” But the reality did not last. The numbness settled back over him, for when he returns from the execution for the evening meal he “remember[s] that I found the soup excellent that evening…” (Wiesel 508). He is still alive.
          Although there are other hangings, it is the shock of executing a young child that produces a spark of humanity within the prisoners; but Wiesel looks upon the scene and loses faith in his God. This hanging is different from the ones before. The crowd spurns participation. There are no prisoners helping this time. As the chairs of the condemned are tipped over, Wiesel states that there is “Total silence throughout the camp” (Wiesel 509). There is no discussion of soup. This dying boy, dying an agonizing death, is more than the group conscience can bear. They openly weep. The “forgotten […] bitter taste of tears” (Wiesel 508) is fresh on their tongues. Unlike the hanging of the defiant Warsaw youth, this hanging touches their hearts. Wiesel, conversely, sees in the horror of this slow, tormenting death of “the sad-eyed angel” (Wiesel 508) the death of his God. As the other other prisoners question where God is during this atrocity, Wiesel responds internally. “Where is He? […] He is hanging here on this gallows…” (Wiesel 509). He sees no other explanation for how this could be happening than that it is God himself being executed. And at the end of the day, even his life giving soup now “tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 509).
          God hanging on a gallows. Wiesel himself may not have intended to use Christian symbolism to show the possibility of hope for the prisoners, but a powerful picture of redemption can be seen in the second execution. Author Dorothy Sayers once wrote:

If an image displays the universal pattern, it will display it at all levels and in all circumstances, whether the poet was or could have been conscious of these possible applications or not. (19)

God in the form of Christ hanging upon a cross is the central image of sacrificial redemption for the Christian faith. Wiesel describes this child as “the little servant, the sad-eyed angel” (Wiesel 508). Likewise, Christ is often referred to as the Servant King. In another parallel, this “child with a refined and beautiful face […] would not speak” (Wiesel 508) before his torturers just as Jesus remained silent before his accusers. Additionally, this young innocent “struggl[ed] between life and death” (Wiesel 509) while hanging between two adult prisoners. Three gallows—three crosses. The hearts of the prisoners were rent in two even as the veil of the temple was rent when Christ died (Matthew 27:51). In Christianity, the cross, the sacrifice of Christ, is the symbol of redemption, the payment for and setting free from sin and guilt. Likewise, through the loss of this one, this innocent, many are given an opportunity to free themselves, their hearts and their humanity from the bondage of this insidious holocaust.
          Loss. All who faced the threat of these unrelenting atrocities lost. The defiant youth and others—many others—lost their lives. Ten thousand captive bodies lost their sense of humanity, of compassion, of life beyond a bowl of soup. Wiesel lost his faith. Yet the loss of one life, though senseless and tragic, broke through to the hearts of these prisoners— prisoners of body, mind, and soul—offering an opportunity to be human again, redeeming them from the sin of complacency and freeing them to feel again.

Trident Technical College, Copyright ©2009

Works Cited

Hurst, John and James Pavlick. “Elie Wiesel Biography.”
          Academy of Achievement ed. Hugh Esten. March 2, 2009.
          American Academy of Achievement. March 6, 2009.
          www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0bio-1

McDonald, Ann, and Jack Trotter, eds. World Views: Classic
          and Contemporary Readings. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2008.

Sayers, Dorothy. Introductory Papers on Dante. New York:
          Harper & Brothers, 1954.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Stella Rodway. McDonald and Trotter 506-09.

Sheep Dung in the Upper Room

March 30, 2009

I suppose this could be categorized as an Easter poem. It takes place the day of the Last Supper. This is another piece that I want to include in my series concerning God getting dirty. The original inspiration came from one of our pastor's sermons (Cal Woods, Pointe North Community Church, Moncks Corner, SC) in which he related an experience in which he stepped in dog doo and tracked it into a church conference room.


Sheep Dung in the Upper Room

I jump out of the boat
and into the muddy water.
Dragging the boat to shore
silt and sand slide under my feet
and through my toes.
It has been a good day for fishing.
Hauling basket after basket
of flopping fish flinging
water and scales,
I think of the Passover meal
to be shared with the Master this night.

But the nets, dripping with kelp and fish crap,
need to be tended. Sand gnats
nip at my ankles as I hurriedly finish my tasks.
Running up the bank,
wet sand from my sandals
splat my calves. Rushing through
the pasture, tall field grasses slap my shins,
leaving their seed clinging to the sweat,
hiding in the hairs of my legs.

I push through the crowded market
of the multitudes making last minute
preparations for Passover.
The streets are covered
with discarded rotted figs and grapes
mingling with the dust of ages and
the urine of goats and dogs and sheep.
Heedless of where I place my steps,
I almost fall
when my foot finds the fresh leavings
of a sheep.

Vaguely aware of the odor
from my freshly soiled sandal,
I enter the upper room
and partake of the supper
with my brethren and the Master.
And though I try to ignore it,
the trail of dust and dung
I have imprinted upon the floor behind me
is evident to all.

Then,
at the end of the meal
after the bread has been broken
and the wine has been shared,
the Master girds himself with a towel
and washes our feet.

Love Is Butter Pecan Ice Cream

(May 15, 2007)
OK. So I was talking to this elderly couple at the restaraunt one day, and they were telling me how they met and how she "reeled" him in with butter pecan ice cream. Somehow, we got discussing poetry, when she asked me to write her a poem. I asked her what she wanted me to write and she said, "Write me a poem about...love."


Sitting on the front porch
          watching the sun set
behind the Spanish moss covered live oaks;
          watching butter pecan ice cream
melt in bowls that have been filled
          with chicken noodle soup,
          Spaghetti-O's, and oatmeal;
watching the dusk settle in
          and snuggle up to the horizon,
like you and me
          and butter pecan ice cream
                    on the front porch.

The Faith of Science

(May 2006)

Were you there?
Did you witness the Bang?
                              or the Boom?
(If no one was there, did it make a sound?)
Was there a bystander
          to the splitting of Dark and Light?
                                        Day and Night?

Did you see
the whorling, swirling, mixing
of rocks and gases,
compacted compounds
(ta da! the energy pill)
                                        (We still have to
                                        figure out where
                                        that little sucker
                                        came from.
                                        What?
                                        It's always been!
                                        Behold!
                                        The Omnipresent Rock!)
become planets and suns.

Was it you that started the clock ticking
to decree the cosmos birthday
to be in the billions and billions?
Start the clock!
          Atomic or planetary?
But wait!
Planets unformed,
          atoms unstable.
Time unmarked, irrelevant.
Rewind.
(The speed of light is slowing
          and the rowers keep on rowing.)

And it's all unconnected—
          connect the dots,
          see the signs,
          imagination unwinds—
your “evidence” doesn't scare me.

I oversimplify?
God!
Maybe it is.

Mama’s Ragdoll (a photo-album for Jane, her mother, and her granddaughter)

(March 5, 2004)
My friend Jane and I were discussing the relationships she has with her mother and granddaughter, and the difficulty she was having translating that into sculpture. The more we talked the more the words formed the picture in my mind. Jane asked if I would put those pictures in writing. When I first presented the poem to her there were only the two major stanzas and the bridge. She told me it wasn't finished. She was right.


Stocking footed
standing on the back stoop,
tiny hands clutching
cotton stuffed cloth—
limp from nights of being slept and dreamt on;
red polka dotted dress stained
at picnics and tea parties under the trees;
blue embroidered eyes smiling,
while innocent eyes search the open sky
for Mother flying away to meet Father.

Sepia snapshots drift.
Black and white photos linger.
Full color images flash.

Knee highs and flats
sitting by the bedside,
older hands caressing
skin and bone—
limp from days of not sleeping, no longer dreaming;
pale rosy flesh drained
from dinners and cocktail parties under the stars;
fading gray eyes smiling
while mature eyes scour the open Sky,
Mama goes the way Daddy went.

Silver halides scan.
Shades of gray focus.
High resolutions dim.

Barefoot toes
pad across the floor,
chubby hands clasping
terry cloth covering—
limp from not napping, video dreams;
sunburned freckles gained
from snacks and games under the sun;
baby blue eyes smiling
while tender eyes ponder an open sky,
as Mom jets off with Dad.

Lamentations 9:11

(December 2003)
This poem was not going to be written. After 9/11, I knew that there would be a plethera of poems written. No need to add to the pile. After watching a documentary filled with visual remnants of history I witnessed live on national television, I realized that my perception was unique and that it was necessary that I pen my thoughts.

1
Long ago,
just yesterday,
live on the breakroom TV,
outsiders poked a hole
in our secure way of life.

2
Lives were lost,
confidences shaken;
agencies formed,
privacy taken.

3
And life as we know it
changed.


4
Weep for the victims
not knowing—
how could they know?
that they were someone’s enemy
marked for death,
innocent or guilty,
unprepared
to put in order things left undone:
afraid, brave,
lost, found—
a thousand stories in two hundred and twenty,
one-fifth of five,
and in the air;
all memorialized in silent speeches
shouted from the rooftops.

5
Weep for the families and friends
not knowing,
wanting to know,
not wanting to know;
passing out pictures of missing,
still missing their faces;
praying to a God they know
or don’t know
or never thought about knowing
until now;
questioning
(can we presume to know?);
breathless,
hearts barely beating,
bloated with blood;
searing pain hotter than flaming fuel,
heavier than crushed concrete.

6
Weep for the heroes
not knowing, yet knowing.
Relentless in their efforts
and hopes
of pulling
even one single, solitary
life
from the heap
of arms and legs
and twisted pickup sticks of steel
and buckets of scrap.

7
Weep for generations to come
not knowing nor comprehending
a federal holiday celebrated
with a day off from work,
picnics, and beer;
the impact on those who
watched
in the streets;
stood
in front of televisions for hours
unproductive, unbelieving, not knowing
what collapsed that day.

8
Weep for the misled and deceived,
not knowing, unknown;
fearful pawns
expecting lasting peace
with violence,
afraid to believe the truth,
blinded by centuries of hate
and vengeance
that does not belong to them;
executing kamikaze heroism.

9
Weep for the misleaders,
not knowing or caring to know
because they know
and are certain
beyond their darkened shadow
of doubt
that God sanctions
and demands their sin;
blind leaders of blind—
the bin Ladens, Husseins, McVeighs.
Weep
that they should be,
that they are—
warped and twisted humanity
bent against humanity;
Freewill misused
for a god, for a nation, for self.

10
Weep for yourself.
And know…
know.
Know love, compassion, mercy;
know tomorrow never comes,
yesterday is gone,
and all the other cliches
are true.
Know yourself.
Know others.
Know God.


11
Dust rained,
Darkness fell,
A light glowed in the smoke.
The hole will be filled,
A day will be marked,
And the second law of thermodynamics will continue.

I Wear A Watch

July 8, 2003
This poem received an Honorable Mention at the 2003 Harvest of the Arts in Rock Hill, SC.


I wear a watch.

Time was
               you watched the sun,
               the horizon rolling to meet the next;
               clouds sauntering past.

               You watched the moon
               inhale and exhale a steady rhythm;
               stars standing still.

               You watched apple blossoms
               squeeze out fleshy fruit to be pressed;
               robins losing interest.

               You watched dried leaves
               take turns letting go and letting God;
               squirrels making investments.

               You watched snowflakes
               parachute, then pummel—building barricades;
               naked trees trembling.

               You watched grass green,
               flowers yellow, red, orange, white;
               raindrops trickling their fancy.

               Time was
                              you watched the sun;
                              time moved at its own pace;
                              your place in time took its time.

I wear a watch.

Reflections on a Past

(November 1992)
At this time my father did not have a relationship with God (that I knew of). He was going from wife to wife, dream to dream, doing his own thing. He finally remarried my mother (25 years after their divorce), renewed his relationship with Jesus, and is now ministering through music to the elderly. Go God!


Sat down to a meal
          of kidney beans and rice—
                    cornbread on the side.
Handed down from daddy.
          Certain he got it from his.
                    Where’d he get his direction?

God, don’t let me go that way.

Lookin’ at 30 Years of TIME—
          photos of history—60’s through 80’s:
                    a lifetime.

                    Erection of walls’
                    torn down again—
                              still there.

                    Massive achievements
                              (token really)
                    amidst naked foreign children
                    and half-naked American women.

                    Erections of men’s lusts—
                              for greed—
                              for power—
                              for a snapshot in the history book.

                    Powerful men—
                              some died;
                              all dead.

                    Anger in the eyes
                    of those who don’t
                    know their cause;
                    passionate appeals
                    from voices that dreamed;
                    desirous glee
                    from the apathetic.

                    Fires in souls,
                    fires in Watts,
                    souls in fire.
                    Napalm replaces brimstone.

A glossy, two-dimensional world.
          Pick it up; put it down.

Turned back to the fixin’s on the plate—
          the beans were cold.

                    God, don’t let me go that way.