Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife: 1 Page 9
“Like Jonah in the whale?”
Sure.
“Like Jonah Mona Bona…”
They were all right kids, I guess.
They gave me something to concentrate on so I wouldn’t vomit.
If only they knew I was concentrating on severing their tiny hearts.
Bye kids, take it easy.
We’re kids, we always take it easy!
My father and stepmother Judy picked me up.
Tractor and trucking hats,
mesh and already sweaty.
A gift for the city boy.
I go to hug him.
I can tell it is a foreign move.
I squeeze even harder.
It’s been two years since I’ve even touched him.
It’s been 29 years since we’ve spoken.
Really spoken.
I heard the doctor spanked me good when I was born.
My dad knocked him out
and Pop held me in midair, without smiling,
without speaking.
I think this was the last time he held me.
His “Hello, I missed you” comes out as a hearty “Let’s eat!”
Texas is one big buffet.
I watch the old me sneak Budweiser cans into the dining area.
They slip their cans from the secret pocket of their Sears overalls
And slowly open the tabs as if they were defusing bombs.
I got back for seconds.
Fried catfish.
Fried okra.
Fried rice and for an ethnic flair,
French fries!
Even the milk was fried.
Father lights a cigarette in my face. My chicken tastes like menthols.
We leave.
At my Father’s trailer, there is a hired hand named Bob.
Bob went to the Nam.
Bob says “Navy nurse broke off a needle in my hip, for spite.
I did not like it.”
You didn’t?
“No, I didn’t, but I threw my full bedpan at her, for spite.”
Bob is addicted to alcohol.
Bob likes to draw.
Bob has Agent Orange.
Bob knows he’s not very good at drawing.
Bob still draws.
A few things you didn’t know about emus! :
1. Best to kill and eat at 14 months.
2. Hard to take their eggs at night. My Stepmother Judy has 20 stitches to prove it.
3. Natives of Australia. Dad says “Aboriginals used them for centuries.”
I ask him if the ab-originals were the first people to do sit-ups.
He smiles.
4. 50,000 currently in the U.S. Dad says pretty soon they’ll take over, Like the Mexicans. It’s not meant in a racist way.
5. Their oils can make you better looking.
6. Tastes like beef.
Mowing lawns in Texas is much different than mowing lawns
on the sun, but only because
there is much more beer involved.
Bob actually fell off of his mower and accidentally
mowed a chicken.
My father was upset, not because something living had died,
he was upset because something he had paid for was gone.
Am I still talking about chicken?
Texas makes you know God resides among air conditioning.
My father won’t buy air conditioning but has a three-thousand-dollar
satellite dish.
Judy asked me if I’d like to go to the supermarket.
I went for the AC.
The air in the store smelled like Antarctic blowjobs
and produce. Ahhhhh.
In the checkout line-an elderly woman stands behind me
with a jug of punch.
I asked her where the wild party was.
She told me that her partying is like a dog chasin’ a car, getting’ hit,
and still not knowin’ how to drive.
I told her that if she wasn’t a poet, she should be,
because I had no idea what the hell she was talking about.
When we come in from the market
I handed him his beers.
handed me old Black Cat firecrackers.
We went outside.
I waited for the burden of conversation to come.
We pretty much just drank.
I almost blew off my thumb.
I kept the fireworks exploding in case he could hear what I was thinking.
I wish I could forgive you—POW!
I wish there was no regret—POW!
I wish I could forgive you—POW!
You messed up—POW!
He breaks the rhythm:
“At one time, I had seven whores livin in my trailer park. One woulda
been good for you. Little chubby, but she got a good future as a
dental assistant, even got her a new little Hyundai,
was doin’ great, till she got on the hashish.”
This was the deepest of our and I still had not said much.
If you lose a remote control in Texas the channel will never change!
It is much to hot to be movin’ around like a maniac, changin’ channels and all.
Madness.
“This is C-Span.”
Silence.
“Do you like C-Span?”
Not in particular.
“Well, why are you watching it?”
Lost the remote.
“Well, I can get up and change it…”
Now don’t go acting like a maniac. I’m relaxing.
Later, he shows me how to use a power saw and tells me
when was 23, he had to jump from a burning building
in San Francisco.
When he got to the fire escape, the people were yelling jump—
And there was nothing to jump into.
This happened when I hugged him.
Jump Jump Jump!
He still doesn’t trust people.
“We honeymooned in Las Vegas, your real mother and me.
her to get away from the blackjack table cause she was bringin’
me bad luck.”
He looks at me like I’m supposed to laugh
but its much too funny to laugh.
Pow.
My father’s words drop like white noise.
I let the dusk colors fall into me:
The seeping blue-eyed hunger of a faithful starving dog
Fat garlic mosquitoes
The boredom clouds of the hottest gray.
Sapphire sky shifts and the tall green blades sway, deep.
At the fourth of July picnic
Uncle Cecil broke out his .22
and starts a genocide for snapping turtles
pulled from the pond.
My cousin Tom threw me in the pond and my watch stopped.
I believe my watch stopped when I crossed into this state.
Every Church is a time Machine.
I visited a Church of Christ a few days earlier.
They don’t believe in music
because the Bible doesn’t say to have music.
My cousin Tom said, “The Bible doesn’t say to wipe your crack,
but you still do!”
He gets a little preachy sometimes.
Tom tells me that Uncle Cecil doesn’t come outside much
anymore.
Three years ago he watched his friend die in his arms
from a bee sting.
A damn bee sting.
The doctors told Cecil all he could’ve done to save him was to
break a pen in half and insert it into the front of his neck.
At the right spot he could’ve breathed again.
It sounds too dangerous to try and he just didn’t know.
Cecil sure as hell knows how to do that now.
That kinda stuff happens in Texas.
It’s hard to fall asleep in Texas.
The air is feisty
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thickens your blood,
I drink beers to fall asleep
Dad says Goodnight son, if we all die tomorrow,
at least you know I’m happy.
This scares me in a Jim Jones kinda way.
I turn the TV on through the night
I leave it on a squiggly channel
for artistic reasons.
My stepmother wakes me by telling me
It’s hotter than horny hogs in Hell’s jalapeno hot tub.
She’s right.
Judy pours herself some orange drink—
Cancer makes Coca-Cola taste crummy now.
She sure drinks a lot of it.
She says “Do you wanna go to the mall? They got everything.
Let’s roll!”
I ask the lady in the 99¢ store how much the rings costs.
She says 99¢.
I asked for any kind of interesting ring for my stepmother.
She slid me a pewter one of two people humping.
I said, “Interesting.”
We roll down the windows on the way home.
The wind rips the scarf from Judy’s head
She grabs up and
Screams
and we swer—v—e,
almost into a ditch
Look out!
My scarf!
Take—e the wheel—God—jeeeeez!
We breathe.
She said she didn’t want me to see her like that.
I tell her that many women movie stars in L.A.
shave their heads on purpose and I think it’s pretty cool.
She says really, like she was four and I had told her about Santa.
I felt sorry for my stepmother Judy,
not because of the cancer, but because of what her ring meant.
I wanted to replace it with my silly one.
She drives home kinda dangerous, as well she should.
It’s hard to sleep again tonight.
Exotic dancers on T.V. are never down and never call.
As the beer makes me sleepy
I step outside
and stare at my watch
I piss into the 2:00 AM
and the forgiveness still waits inside my watch.
The trees outside here look dangerous.
Too dangerous.
I wish I could forgive you
I wish there was no regret
I wish I could forgive you
I already said that.
JOIN THE AIRBORNE
I thought I would die during this time in my life.
It really made me glad to be alive after that.
I would like to talk to anyone thinking of joining. There is pride for the living.
And honor for the ones who don’t make it.
Your Mother doesn’t care about honor.
I asked why our foxholes needed to be so deep.
“When an enemy grenade lands in the foxhole that you dug six feet deep, the
shrapnel will not destroy any men or equipment. When the enemy sends a
ball of fire through your fat head, we don’t have to worry about burying your
sorry ass cause you’ve already done the work for us.”
A Drill Sergeant used to tell me when he would be absent so the squad leaders
could beat up the ‘ate up’ privates. We beat up a guy who wet his bed before
inspection. His name was Middleton, I think.
Going for weeks without even seeing a real woman
makes you want to kill even more.
A new paratrooper caught the wind into the training tower. His chute
collapsed and he straddled the metal. Eighty feet up, he wept in pain and we
joked about his balls cause there was nothing else we could do.
During basic training, a friend from L.A. in my unit tried to kill himself by
trimming his dog tags and jamming them into a light socket. I forget his name.
Maybe Stone.
At every base is a main flagpole with a ball on top called a truk. It contains
A razorblade, a bullet and matches. It is for the commander of the base, if over-
run, to climb to the top, cut up the flag, burn it and blow his brains out.
The 82nd has a marquee near Bastogne street. It has a number on it. If we
could make it 82 days without a training accident we could have a day off.
not because of the cancer, but because of what her ring meant.
We hadn’t had a day off in 10 years.
Because of the large increase in suicides near Christmas time for members of
the 82nd, the base hired a NY choreographer to do a musical based on making
soldiers feel good about being alive. I was in it. We sang Memory from Cats
and We Got a Lot of Livin’ To Do from some play. It was ridiculous. It was one
more thing we did for show. The guy that stood next to me in one of the songs
I step outside hung himself to death.
Walking through airports in beret, jump boots and secrets,
I have never felt so proud.
THE FIRST TIME YOU HUGGED ME IT WAS WITH YOUR LEFT ARM
THE FIRST TIME YOU HUGGED ME
IT WAS WITH YOUR LEFT ARM
I am very attracted to themes regarding dismemberment.
So is Aimee Bender so this is probably the last one I write for her.
The entire island had a warm glue-gun smell.
The air dripped honey silver moons.
One afternoon
rafting in the Pacific
my wife fell off
and stayed down for one minute.
I marveled at her lungs.
She popped back up with no arm.
(It’s much more horrific in imagining it than actually being there).
I struggled and threw her back on our rented raft.
She was bleeding everywhere.
I tied her shoulder with my swimming trunk drawstring.
I watched for more sharks.
She said “ Oh God. Oh My God.
I’m getting blood on your new shorts, my God, O my God.”
I said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get me some new ones.”
She said “How can you love a woman with no arm?”
I said,
“I probably…can’t.”
When I say I loved your guitar playing Aimee I meant it
and your arms around me was my reason for staying on earth.
I can’t imagine you throwing your arm around me.
It is the truth
so be quiet and rest here.
I’m going to get out and drown to death.
You’ll float to shore soon.
I know you’re shaking
but hush it.
Make my last…half embrace a good one.
It was the arms I loved.
It was your arms that I needed.
The man laid near her gushing shoulder for a moment
covered himself in her life
and vanished into the deep.
TOMB
Someone read this poem of mine and asked if it could be printed on a huge poster and put in a storefront window in Long Beach. It seems to take on a new meaning when the text is big. In a book it seems to mean that love is war and do everything you can to taste it at least once. Huge, it seems to say war is not worth dying for. I think man understands war innately, but not love. I think war is necessary as long as people keep failing their speech communications classes. Here it is. make it what you want.
THE GREAT BATTLE
love is the only war worth dying for
A FINGER, TWO DOTS, THEN ME
I guess people love this poem the most. Maybe cause it explains what happens to us when we die in a way that might seem possible. Actually, I have no idea why this one is the most popular. This was written after I had read an article about a father who laid out a blanket for himself and his son in a park by my ho
use, then planned on killing both but after he killed his son with the shotgun, he tried to kill himself but screwed it up and lived. I wanted to coat the wickedness of that scene with something romantic and kind of funny so the park won’t hold that memory for me. Beauty is born from tragedy.
A VOICE AT THE PROCESSION
Lying together in the park on Seventh,
our backs smoosh grass and I say
I will love you till I become a child again,
when feeding me and bathing me
is no longer romantic,
but rather necessary.
I will love you till there is no till.
Till I die.
And when that electroencephalogram shuts down, baby
that’s when the real lovin’ kicks in.
Forgive me for sounding selfish
but I won’t be able to wait under the earth for you
(albeit a romantic thought for groundhogs,
gophers and the gooey worms)
.
I will not be able to wait for you…
but I will meet up with you
and here’s where you will find me:
get a pen—
Hold your finger up
(two fingers if your hands are frail by now)
and count two stars directly to the left
of the North American moon.
You will find me there.
You will find me darting behind amazing quasars
Behind flirtatious winks
of bright and blasting boom stars!
Sometimes charging so far into space
the darkness goes
blue.
I will be there chasing sound waves
riding them like two-dollar pony ride horses
that have finally broken free and wild.
I will be facing backwards, lying sideways,
no hands, sidesaddle, sometimes standing
sometimes screaming zip zang zowie!
My God, it’s good to be back in space…Where is everybody?
You will recognize my voice.
You will see the flash of a fire trail
burning off the back of me
burning like a gasoline comet kerosene sapphire.
This is my voice.
Don’t look for my body or a ghost.
I’ll resemble more a pilot light than a man now.
I’m sure some will see
this cobalt star white light from earth
and cast me a wish like a wonder bomb.
And I’ll think “Hmmph. people still do that? Good.”
I’m sure I’ll take the light wonder bombs
to the point in the universe
where sound does end.
The back porch of God’s summer home.