POEM: Charles Simic's Stones

 

Charles Simic’s Stones

“…I remember lying in a ditch and staring at some pebbles while German bombers were flying overhead. That was long ago. I don’t remember the face of my mother nor the faces of the people who were there with us, but I still see those perfectly ordinary pebbles.”

“It is not “how” things are in the world that is mysterious, but that it exists,” says Wittgenstein. I left precisely that. Time had stopped. I was watching myself watching the pebbles and trembling with fear.”

“Then time moved on and the experience was over”

___________________________________________              ~ Charles Simic

 

In an age bereft of Truth

It may matter little if our captors

              are the Koch Brothers, Lemurians

                            or the remnant tribe of extraterrestrials

                            with a name unpronounceable in any human tongue

 

In an age extolling

The primacy of Ignorance over fact

The identity of the Oppressor

Takes lesser precedence

Over the demands to scrape for our basic needs

To keep from starving to death

Or so one would surmise

 

In an age when life itself

Has been placed on a precipice

And the living are encouraged

To jump

The names of those who brought us

To that edge are important

Because they are our own

 

Each of us, by failing to take action

Contribute to the march to the edge

We may not, individually,

Be the proponents of the Call to Leap

But in our unwillingness

To question the instructions

Directing us to the edge

We have colluded in our extinction

Such is the time wherein we live

The Generals calling the march

Stand back

Await our response

Hoping beyond hope

That we don’t look over our shoulders

and see their

Shameful

Nakedness

 

How do we correct this?

By paying heed to History

Watch close for tiny details

Take time to reflect on Simic’s stones

     For concentration on minutiae

     Actually helps better focus

On the larger vision

And it is on that, which we must act.

poem: Dak To

 Dak To

Atop a beaucoup hellish hill

inside a searing, dusty

NVA trenched and tunneled
mortar-riddled outpost
He gets posted for MacArthur
 
Out of water, no supplies
Six UH medevacs shot down
Trying to get to 2/503
 
Add to the carnage
Westmoreland’s friendly fire
Blowing away the backup
Turning medics into oxen fodder
 
In the middle of it all,
during a November chill
– sleep deprived –
Joe Turner tried a nap
while body bags
piled higher right next to him
almost toppled over.
At least they were warm
 
Dawn on Tuesday rose
permanent in Joe’s memory
Rotting flesh and napalm etched
yet still more hours pass
before his airlift to Support Base 4
 
Shipped from there to stateside
Trussed and restrained
screaming scenes from Bosch, Lovecraft and Dante
Finally scoped out by
exempted med school interns
 
The pukes sure knew how
to diagnose Joe’s inability to adapt
“He’s schizophrenic,”
they say

End of story.