Prose 

someone else's twilight stole my child oct #2

"I have done the best I know how all my life, but it didn't amount to much in the end."  (margaret bourke-white 1937)

oh christ to rewrite

the history of a life,
walking on a lake
looking for bullfrogs
might do the trick, 
be it mine. 

how many by now,
how far, and if so,
   "why oh why, why
   did he, did she, did we
   turn our faces so far far
   far away from the window,
   oh, the sky there...
   the sky."

i am looking today
at farm country roads
lush with ferns, and cows
who almost say howdy
through the brownness
of their eyes, 
older than stars.

these ferns know cotton
and cotton knows evil
and evil takes no quarter;
in seminar after seminar
lecture after lecture
tour after tour, these things
i had already seen in a lake
in all lakes....

all lakes are connected by the seas
and all islands are eroded as one: 
the coast of b.c., to baikal
the banks of the columbia
the shoreline of great slave
the dunes of rhode island sound
the beaches of nital, argentina,
the sands of guatemala, thailand, 
elephant butte, erie, and the salt  
all the more the same, until

when we placed our toes,
all twenty of them
into prudhoe bay, fat jack
spun his ears to fight bugs

and as north slope 
rednecks tore tonsils
hooting at my wife, 
a single white tern 
settled on my heart.

these things 

have touched my feet 

the same as they would

your own, had you the talc

to have gone this way, too
before learning the hard way
that the pickens men
never 
ever 
fuck around, and rarely 
die lying down. 
   

the red river with its garbage
may yet have alligators,
and one might run a risk
if they do as i am today
diving each night into a bayou
just short of stoner boat ramp:
   i hardly care anymore
   i hardly care anymore
   i hardly care anymore,
   
but damn them all the more
as such for thus stripping me,
my bony white legs, high cheeked   
chickasaw memories, and the blessings
of a dog named jack. 

i feel i may have seen things 

those people would never believe

   "attack ships on fire off the    

    shoulder of orion..

    c-beams glittering in the dark 

    near the tannhauser gate...

    all those moments will be lost in time

    like tears in rain... time to die."    

but my eyes have seen the blood red stare
of neo-machiavellian's very offspring, evil incarnate
standing as though it is just
another tuesday, or a night out
to the smokey bar
at williams and harvard
streets. 

standing there, smartly dressed
wishing of, poorly fit
expecting all, strangely familiar
and believing anything,
the insanity of their surrounds
so beautifully distorted
that they won't even see it
coming- wham bam
thank you ma'am. 

so, it is obvious, yes? 
that they are coming at me still
in my dreams, in the gut
in my writings, in my future
one misstep at a time,
and will soon be leaving
one conviction at a time:
dripping incarnate
as though they aren't deserving,
with the same old story, 
every time, 
the who me? line of bullshit,   
     "what these people don't understand
      is that i would never do these things"
  
next time you hear about it 
ruddy my man, ugly gray suit
it will be in front of a federal jurist
i promise you as much
you and your signatures
and your fat ass secretary
for every time, each and
every time: 
   you do remember how to count,
   mr. rudd, is this not correct?

                                  (self pjreed 2011)   

                          notes 
   -pic margaret bourke-white: self portrait 1933
   -pic fat jack: e-modern 1994
   -pic night louisiana woods: self pjreed 2012
   -pic theodore r. cowell (t. bundy): hexel.jay 1979
   -pic immigrant at dawn: a. ortega c/o pan left prod. tucson 2004
   -quote: from "you have seen their faces" margaret bourke-white 1937
   -quote: from "god's little acre" erskine caldwell 1933
   -quote: from the film bladerunner 1982
   -quote: utah court transcript theodore r. cowell (t. bundy) 1976


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