An Introduction to French Poetry: Artaud

ALL WRITING IS GARBAGE,
according to Artaud, the madman,
and the older I get, the more I agree;
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Goethe...pick one:
It's all refuse, debris,
spilling from the mind of man,
chasing God's imagination
(we'll never catch up...trust me),
leading, at best, to models of DNA,
or atoms,
houses built with the spokes and wheels
of  Tinker Toys, Lego worlds,
where descriptions don't adequately describe,
explanations fail to explain,
and dialog is as wooden
as the First Lady's face,
there staring from a pike,
the clarity of her character development
as hopeless as Modigliani eyes.
It's garbage.
PEOPLE WHO COME OUT OF NOWHERE AND TRY TO PUT INTO WORDS
ANY PART OF WHAT GOES ON IN THEIR MINDS ARE PIGS.
That offends me, but still,
THE LITERARY SCENE TODAY IS A PIGPEN.
I didn't say it, he did,
 but then,
Antonin Artaud was a madman,
and yet,
even our own sweet Emily,
with downcast eyes, whispered,
"Much madness is divinest sense."

(August 1986)

Around Kenner's Bend

Two a.m., you're down in a grain barge on the Mississippi.  Around the river's bend is New Orleans, a smiling old woman with too much make-up.  The firehose throbs as you blast rotten kernels from their cracks.  Crazy Joe is sitting in a triangle of half-light down on the low end.  He's keeping the pump clear, cramming his fist up into its guts.  You're wet to the waist and covered with bits of corn from the knees down.  The barge simmered in the summer sun for weeks; the darkness stinks.  Someone approaches making tiny figure-eights with a pale red ember, holds it to your lips.

A ladder leads to a square of stars where the air comes from.  You turn your face up to it and yell, "YO!  TURN HER OFF!"  You drop the hose, and it ascends, the nozzle scraping on the black barge bed, goes clattering up the rungs.  There's a line of men with brooms and squeegees coming up behind.  Crazy Joe is on his knees; the end is nearing.

When the last fistful of corn and cup of water has been sucked up, there's the inevitable bump and push, mad race for the stairs, hands clawing at your legs as you climb, but once out, there's the equality of naked angels standing beneath the stars and beautiful moonlight swan dives into the Mississippi.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, July 27, 1986)

The Good Neighbor

     The evergreen overrun of Balboa Park--9th Street, San Diego, senile mansions sliced into apartments--housed a crosscut of American blood: black, white, Mexican...Vietnamese.  Good neighbors were those you didn't see or hear and only met in passing for hello, the weather and a squint for the dead bird or rat in the dumpster, no doubt.

     One time, the death smell grew and with it conversation; the first rushed you along, while the second forced a stop.  Two trash days came and went, but the stench, nearly visible, remained.  We guessed cat, then dog, and searched, but failed to find one.  Then someone thought to ask about the old man who lived upstairs.  No one had seen him in weeks.  We climbed the stairs, knocked, and got no answer, so boosted a  young man up to the balcony, his feet on our shoulders.  He pulled himself up and over the ironwork, and, looking through the French doors, called down his description:  "It's him, all right!  He's slumped over in an easy chair, dark, slimy looking!  The smell's choking me; I'm coming down!"

     Tina, from number two below, telephoned.  No one knew the old man's name, knew of any relative, but the coroner came flanked by two men dressed in white, angels with hairy arms and black shoes.  They picked him up so gently, the old man fell apart, so they shoveled him into a bag and rolled him away on a cart.


(March 1986)

LC-39

Egret and blue heron
wade through reeds.
See those bubbles?
That's an alligator,
or a really big turtle.
Oh, and look!
There's a bald eagle
on the water tower
with Launch Complex 39-B
in the background.
Do you think they wonder
where the smoke and the thunder
and the fires of freedom have gone?


(Nov 2012)

Thems Po Little Minks

I heard it said some mama minks
eats they young before thems think.
Thems gets all excited, raises a stink,
and eats all they babies
(thems po little minks).

Now, I figures it logical
thems mama minks
has missed something somewheres,
missed too many winks,
maybe thems wakes up with too many kinks,
stays out too late, has too many drinks,
comes home all dizzy and ready to sink,
and eats all they babies
(thems po little minks).


(1974)

Beating Erasers

I was sent, more often than most,
to beat the erasers.
I found my niche early
and volunteered to stand alone on the playground,
where I leaned back and clapped like a seal,
watching vocabulary, simple sentences,
fractions and small equations explode into clouds of dust,
literature, science and all of history
going up in a clap.
I liked the smell of it,
the taste, and
I'm sure I ate more chalk
than I ever used at the board.



(1985)

N123JF: Flying at Night with Doc Fowler

There's nothing quite like night from a cockpit,

    "November 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, do you have information Lima?"
    "Juliet Fox, affirmative Lima."

accelerating toward an unseen point, V2, beyond stopping,

    "3 Juliet Fox, taxi into position and hold."
    "Juliet Fox, position and hold."

turbochargers screaming harmony (Lycoming TIO-541-E1C4),

    "King Air 2-4 Tango, contact Ground 1-2-1-niner.  Good day."
    "Good day."

watching needles climb and settle half a needle's width
away from red lines, and that is, manifold pressure 41 inches,
2900 RPM, right on the money, fuel and oil pressures in the green,

    "1-2-3 Juliet Fox, cleared for take-off, make right hand turn out."
    "Juliet Fox, rolling, right hand turn out."

temperatures climbing, lift, gravity, thrust and drag doing battle,

    "Little Rock tower, 4-6 Yankee Echo, downwind, runway 2-2."
    "Yankee Echo, extend downwind, follow 737 on short final, caution wake turbulence."
    "Yankee Echo, extending downwind."

then airborne, the temporary victory, gear up and locked, throttles coming back,
fuel boost off, climbing, banking right, seeing strobes at 2 O'clock,

    "1-2-3 Juliet Fox, you have traffic 2 O'clock, descending from two thousand."
    "Juliet Fox has traffic in sight."
    "Juliet Fox contact Departure 1-2-5-6-5. Good day."
    "1-2-5-6-5.  Good day, sir."

leveling off at 4,500 feet for the short hop, engaging the autopilot, watching instruments,
the perfect stars, the paltry lights of humanity, the Stygian separation,
indicated airspeed 207 knots, the music of Morse code
(Hot...Springs...V-O-R); over Benton, now,
glow of Hot Springs on the horizon,

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, ten mile final, Runway 2-3."

scattered light carved by the black lakes' void, Hamilton, Catherine,
mixture and props forward, slowing, descending;

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, five mile final, Runway 2-3."

now key the mic three times, and runway lights come on outlining a rectangular abyss,
like flying into a video game, boost pumps on, flaps at approach, gear down,
(three green), throttles coming back, slowing, descending,

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, short final, Runway 2-3."

slowing, sinking, over the threshold, throttles all the way back, sinking, sinking,
flare it out, back with the yoke, back, back, back...down and rolling out, hold the nose off,
let it down easy, touch the brakes, touch them, get on them and make that first turnoff.

    "Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, clear of active."



(1983)

We Read Our Poets from Afar

While at the university,
a grey professor said to me,
"We read our poets from afar,
so we can drive our motorcars
between their drunken lines of wit
and still have room to weave a bit.
We like our poets highly bred,
but gaunt of limb and underfed;
most of all, we like them dead."
Every time I asked, "Why so?"
the old professor shook a no,
"We read our poets from afar..."


(1978)

5-3 Fox is Looking

November 5-2-5-3 Fox, you have traffic at 12 O'clock, two miles, altitude unknown.

     5-3 Fox is looking.

5-3 Fox, the traffic is now 1 O'clock, one mile.

     5-3 Fox is looking.

5-3 Fox, the traffic is 'very close.'

     5-3 Fox...5-3 Fox does not have the traffic.

5-3 Fox, the aircraft passed beneath you, now at your 7 O'clock, one mile, traffic no longer a factor.

     5-3 Fox.



(1998)

Fear and Trembling Leads to Nausea

"Fear and trembling leads to nausea?" she said, hair spilling to one side as she steered the stroller clear of an oncoming skateboard.  "Are you certain?"

"Well, if not, you end up with Wittgenstein," I replied, slanting forward to look at the twins and wiggle my fingers under their chins.

"Not necessarily," she argued, stopping at an intersection, "What about Albert Schweitzer?"

I helped her lower the carriage over the curb, "By way of fear and trembling, I suppose?"

"Why not? That would seem to make more sense than Wittgenstein, or Sartre for that matter."  She nodded to a red Toyota that was inching back out of the crosswalk.

"Well," I walked to the front of the stroller, lifted it over the curb, "perhaps," the twins squinted up at me with their sun soured faces, "but I thought we were talking about existentialism."

"It's a Christian concept," controlling the pram with one deft hand she frowned at me, dabbed white matter from the angle of my eye, and examined her fingertip.

I pushed her hand down, "Come on, honey, are you telling me Nietzsche and Camus were Christians?  Dostoevsky was a Christian?"

An old woman walking with a cane leaned toward the babies as we passed, her smile preceding her face.  "No, but they were reacting to Christianity."

"Against, certainly," I said, smiling, waving at the woman, "we agree, then."

"No, you don't understand me...they were what they were due to a...loathing, I guess, of Christianity," she stopped, rolled hair behind her ears.

"Yes, that's part of it," I said, watching sun eddy up her earring. "I'm agreeing with you."

"No," she reached over the hood, righted one child, "you are not agreeing with me."

"Yes, well maybe not," I conceded, "but here's the library."  I held the door open, and the twins began to cry.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, September 6, 1987)

Memucan Pays His Debt

You were too, too harsh.
Atoms failed and flew apart,
imperfectly reassembled,
they stumble through space,
molecules struggle to form,
and there is life somehow.

These children you see
are not their father's,
not their mother's children.
They leech to the leviathan
like citizens of Rome

while we chase after ourselves,
after the all and nothing "I"
as if our roots did not exist
and our seeds were not falling
toward the future.



(Permafrost, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Fall 1985)

Cat Hair Haiku

Little black sliver
with a silver tip
adrift in a sea
of potato soup.



(The Sentinel-Record, Hot Springs, AR, July 6, 1985)

Arc Welding Concerto in E-Flat Major

The allegro of the welder's instrument,
the fussing of voltage in a fusion zone
(dark windows burst with lightning),
and, caesura, the lifting of the hood,
and, presto, down.

Allegretto, while he has the spot,
but adagio non troppo along the seam,
little waves of weld,
smoke dancing through strobelight: vivace!
His two becoming one: vivace!

Rondo: allegro assai...ah!
He's down to a nub of rod.
Look, the heavy glove, the c-clamps;
this is the art of creation.
Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, November 10, 1985)

Ginsberg and the Micropaedia

You are surrounded, Gins-
berg,
by ginger lily, gingko and ginseng,
but YOU should have been in color, Gins-
berg,
or 3-D, day-glo, pop-out, Gins-
berg,
like kids books with little cymbals
that CHING when the page is turned, Gins-
berg,
or aboriginal meter sticks that
TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK:
DON'T SMOKE! DON'T SMOKE! DON'T SMOKE!
A column for your trouble, Gins-
berg.
A picture for your existence, Gins-
berg.
Is it worth it, Gins-
berg?
Are you still there, Gins-
berg?


(Sentinel-Record, 1982; Sou'wester, Southern Illinois University, Fall, 1988)

The Thing About the Heart

The thing about the heart is,
while lying in such positions that
it pumps against the rib cage
telegraphing its rhythm
to the outer senses,
that it doesn't belong to you.

It seems somehow alien,
seldom heard,
and less often felt,
but when it is,
however briefly,
mortality skips
like a stone across the mind,
and you start adding and subtracting
and forecasting a lifetime.

Then the phone rings,
and you grab the cigarettes,
light one, and breathe
great clouds of immortality.


(Sou'wester, Southern Illinois University, Fall, 1988)

Dog Days On Lake Hamilton

The lake here stinks in August.
Parasites cling to clumps of weed
and dream of inner thighs.
Porch lights are left on for snakes,
and the lake fills up with Texans.
Docks rock from the great wall wakes
of ocean going vessels with
manikins in bikinis supine on the prow

(all those little debutantes still curtsy to a bow).

Oh, there's watermelon and chocolate pie, but it's
a chicken bone decoration, and from Aunt Helen's
sun tea jar, a much too sweet libation.

Yes, the lemon swirls, and the ice cubes click,
and the sun goes down with a tick...tick...tick,
then a floor fan stirs up the thick night air
(there's a firefly on the screen),
and the children here are sweating,
trying hard to dream.


(Arkansas Magazine, August 30, 1987; Sou'wester, Southern Illinois Univ, Fall 1988)

Retrogression

And that's the way it ended,
hanging upside down, feet
tied to a beam, he died in a
pirouette propelled by cabbages.

His last words were inaudible;
although, someone swore he said,
"My sins in life were many,"
but that pish-poshed
by one who claimed,
"Of sons, I have not any."
Most just said he groaned.

Of course, it was inadvertency.
He made a few mistakes;
world leaders can't afford to.

Still, he was a brilliant politician,
led his class at the university.
He was one of those precocious kids
who seem to look right through you.

And, oh, what a perfect baby!
The doctor said so himself
as he held the newborn by its feet
and soundly slapped its butt.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 12, 1986)

Dream

I

think these

raindrops dream

of being snowflakes

falling in Vermont somewhere

balanced on the edge of a footprint

near maple trees where dented buckets hang

and old horses breathe musky clouds and wait...

no.

They dream

a world inside

before they splash

into the lake.  Shhhhhhh.

(Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1984)

Human Circuits

With parallel circuits, the total resistance
is less than the least resistor...imagine that.
There is no positive without negative.
Switches make and break the circuit;
diodes and transistors control it.
When things get too jazzed up
fuses and breakers destroy themselves
to save it, and when things cool down,
you simply change the fuse or
press the breaker and continue.
But if it breaks again,
you've got problems, pal.
That's when you need a schematic
and the awful trouble shooting guide
with suggestions that fade into your future.
If you're skilled enough to isolate the problem,
you still must be wise enough to decide
whether the repair is worth the labor
when there are so many new units to be had.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, August 18, 1985)

Dissecting Sheep Brains, 1974

Disappointed by its size--I
had expected it to be twice as large as the room
behind me and just as liquid, but it was no more
colossal than a cantaloupe and stiff from formaldehyde--I
held a human brain in my hands: shell or skin, I
thought, of something gone, and passed it
to the student on my right.
Hand to hands it circled the room,
matter no longer knowing itself,
over the text and to the teacher, neither
of which or whom, according to Allan Bloom,
could account for consciousness.  So
she splashed it back into its vat,
right side up,
of course.
Then
we dissected sheep brains
because brains are basically the same,
though the human is holy and hard to come by,
but even if we had disserved Man, I
knew, following my first cut, dead center,
block cheese, there was nothing for the eye to see,
no shards of glass to pluck out, no fleeing demons,
no networks of infinite electrical connection
made of multicolored neon light escaping
through incision's seam, no thoughts, no dreams;
just another slice...and cheese.  And, too, I
knew the best of microscopes saw not much more,
synapse, atom, quark, perhaps,
and it would evanesce again,
and that surgeons pricked for where thoughts
but why thought not at all, so I
sliced again and again, then I
cross sliced and diced it for
the pleasure of those on either side.  I
was first to learn the lesson when it came
to brains and galaxies of night, and I
remain disgusted by my ignorance.


(Poet's Corner,Arkansas Democrat, 1990)

Pumpkin and the Praxis 48

Cat sits behind typewriter,
her eyes jumping with keys.
She's leaning over the carriage
now; if she tries to catch one,
she's in trouble:
she'll have half a paragraph
on her paw
before she pulls it out.

"Yeah, well, that's not the half of it.  He went right back up, but as soon as he got to the top step, "POW!" the guy let him have it right on the kisser, and when he hit the sidewalk that time, he was bleeding.  I don't know if I was scared or what, but I went running up the steps and tried to tackle the guy.  Then Frankie came out from behind the door and started kicking me in the ribs..."

Pumpkin jerks back
when the bell rings,
then forward again,
her cat brows knitted,
her paw raised.

"Then grandfather came back up, and we all went rolling down to the sidewalk.  All I remember seeing is legs, fists and concrete.  When we hit the bottom, Frankie's father was right on top of me; I could hardly breathe, but I was still holding on.  I guess we did pretty good for a little while, but when grandfather got knocked out, that ended it.  I was still crying and swinging, but Frankie's father pulled him up the steps by his hair, and they went back inside..."

I stop to hear
exactly what I've said.
Pumpkin curls
around the typewriter,
purring for me
to turn it off,
purring for me
to turn it off.


(Forum, Ball State University, Autumn 1989)

The Pre-Socratics

I like the old Greeks,
the way their names
appear so difficult,
yet, slip from the mouth
with ease: Xenophanes.
If I have another child,
I'm sure to name him
Anaxagoras, Heraclitus
if a girl.
Parmenides, Protagoras, Thales:
Such pretty names,
such serious thoughts,
all so long ago.


(Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1986)

Mehr Licht

Then what he finally wanted was
more light.
The darkening better
for that purpose.
But, perhaps that's what he saw:
More light
than ever seen by human eyes;
a godly, unseen, odd light
too fast for metaphors to catch.
More light
after lives of light.
More light
while all came black.
More light
than stars swear at night.
More light!
More light!
More light!


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, September 22, 1985)

Blake's Angels

Blake's angels
have fallen from the trees
like rotten fruit...
the liar.


(Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1984)

Children of Dachau

Looking down from the footbridge,
the Wurm runs free and clear to the bottom;
autumn leaves trace out the current,
pass beneath the bridge, and pirouette
under a slack strand of rusted barbwire.

German schoolchildren,
paired by friendship and affection,
walk on stones where barracks once stood,
muted piano keys of stone,
playing the camp like a sad ballad.
Their teacher raises an arm to gather them,
a sermon of silence: Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.

And so the sadness and the silence turn to cheer,
and out and down the Romerstrabe they run,
bookbags stuffed and bouncing on their backs
(Whenever books are burned men also
in the end, are burned). Beneath a
lineal row of chestnut trees in fall,
those children hurry liquid on their way,
clean, pink faces, feet kicking paths through leaves,
and I smell the pleasing woodsmoke of a nearby chimney.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, December 7, 1986) 

Take off Your Hat, Lennie. The Air Feels Fine.

My father was a WWII veteran.  In the late 1980s, while in his early 60s, his health began to fail.  He went to the VA Hospital in Little Rock for help.  He wasn’t assigned one doctor, but saw several and they unaccountably changed from one visit to the next.  None, however, could quite figure out what was wrong with him, although each prescribed drugs.  He was on drugs to counteract the side effects of drugs, and then a drug to counteract that drug.  And so it went. He developed uncontrollable shaking. One doctor quickly diagnosed him as being an alcoholic:  “Mr. Ketzer, you appear to me to have the DTs. How much do you drink?”  My father probably averaged one beer a week, and when he became sick, not even that.  I entertained the idea of tracking down that doctor at the VA Hospital and kicking his ass good, but my mother dissuaded me, saying that the doctor later agreed that wasn’t the case, and my father actually liked him, but then, my dad liked everyone. 

No, my father didn’t have the leisure to become an alcoholic:  He worked all day at the airport and then came home and worked until ten at night up in his shop, rebuilding motorcycles, cars, boats and airplanes.  He saw another doctor at the VA who, after reviewing his record, was aghast at the quantity of drugs they had him on.  The doctor said he couldn’t make a diagnosis with all that going on and took him off everything.  Not long after, but some two years from his first visit, it was found that he had leukemia. By that time, the cancer had spread into his spinal fluid, which accounted for the shakes.  They put him on chemo and pumped him up with steroids and morphine, but it was too late; he went downhill quickly.  I don’t know exactly what they did, but dad allowed them to experiment on him, to try this and that, looking for a cure; although it usually involved pain and sickness.  His thought was that it might help others.  During his many nights at the VA Hospital, he was robbed.  The hospital was located in a bad part of town, and people came in off the streets to sleep, roam the halls, and steal from patients.  He watched a man go through his drawers and take what he wanted.  My kick-ass father was too sick to rise from the bed and do something about it. 

Had they caught and treated the leukemia earlier, perhaps recommended bone marrow transplants from me or his grandson, they might have saved him.  They didn’t.  He passed away in 1993.  My father was not only a WWII veteran, but a combat veteran who served with Darby’s Rangers, a special forces, tip-of-the-spear outfit.  He was seriously wounded in North Africa and captured by Romel’s troops, spent two and a half years as a prisoner of war.  He should have received the best health care this country had to offer, but that’s not what he got.  He should not have received the best care owing to the big hearts of the good people of the United States, but because he earned it and deserved it.  What he received was government health care in all its glory.  I believe VA hospitals are better these days, primarily because we’ve been at war, and have been winning those wars (their job is to fight wars and win, not build bogus nations).  If between wars, or forced by politicians to lose or fight wars to a draw, then many people, and especially politicians, could not care less about the treatment of veterans.  

My mother, on the other hand, lived into her 80s.  Due to her many medical issues, my brothers and I reluctantly placed her in a private assisted living facility near my oldest brother.  My father left her with a nice nest egg, and she continued to receive his POW veteran’s benefits, and also received the appropriate Medicare Part D plan, both by virtue of my brother’s ability to comb through piles of literature, rules and regulations, to make sure she got the benefits and best coverage for which she was eligible.  Even so, she outlived her nest egg and faced the prospect of being moved to a state-run facility, as the private facility would not accept Medicaid.  Her greatest fear was being sent to a government-run old folks home, because she had seen her father (William Ernest, called W.E.), who lived well into his 90s and had no means at all, die in one.  I visited W.E.’s facility with her: It was dark, dirty and the care horrible.  W.E. had been shuffled around between family members, and mom and dad were the last to keep him, but it just got to be too much.  W.E. was hard to deal with, fought with my dad, needed nursing that mom wasn’t able to provide, and one night they awoke to see him naked, standing in their bedroom and pissing on their dresser, at which, dad drew the line, and it broke mom's heart to send her father away.  Mom’s private assisted living facility wasn’t the Ritz, by any stretch; in fact, it too had that ugly smell, wasn’t adequately cleaned, and the care could have been much better. But compared to W.E.’s last stop, it “was” a five star hotel, and it sure the hell cost like one.  I know because my brothers and I chipped in so she wouldn’t have to move: We did that, not the government. 

Now I’m at that unfortunate stage of life myself where medical issues come to the forefront, but I am fortunate that I’ve been able to save and plan, even though the bulk of my money goes to insurance of one ilk or the other: home insurance, car insurance, life insurance, health care insurance, and long term health care insurance.  Except for the incredible deductibles, I’m covered!  I'm also a veteran, so I have access to VA care, but I don’t take it for a few reasons, the first being self-centered: After what they did to my father, I don’t trust them, and prefer to pick my own doctors and dentists.  Additionally, there are veterans without means who can’t afford insurance, and, of course, our servicemen and women who served and continue to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan need immediate care.  I would be embarrassed to get in line with them.  Yeah, insurance and taxes—I still pay taxes.  I just hope I can keep it all going and some unforeseen emergency doesn’t trip me up, because, I am quite content to die in my own bed, just have the nurse bring plenty of morphine.  But if things do go awry, my wife precedes me, and I can no longer function or have knowledge of the functioning, just do Of Mice and Men on me:  “Take off your hat, Lennie, the air feels fine.” 

Frogs

The thing about frogs and toads crossing roads
is that some end up with their hind legs smushed,
unable to move, but quite alive,
stretching up on front legs,
to look sadly into the morning sun,
rising, getting warmer,
like the asphalt,
and you know it'll be cooking by ten,
so what do you do then,
stomp the toad and get it all over your tennis shoe?
Kick it off the road and let it die there?
Hope another car comes quickly,
or just let it stay and cook?
Oh, sure, you'd take that toad to a vet.
No you wouldn't, and besides,
they don't want a bucket of common frogs and toads
to deal with every morning,
and who would pay, you?  Ha!
Yeah, it's a conundrum, I'll admit,
and the lucky take a direct hit.



(SKJ, 08/15/12)

And here's Baby's Cradle

Here's mama's knives and forks,
    each methodically rubbed, rinsed and dried,
    King Edward silver and still pretty,
    although damaged,
    fork tongs bent from unknotting shoe laces,
    butter knives twisted from turning screws.
Here's daddy's table,
    solid oak, kid's chewing gum stuck underneath,
    decades of scratches and dents on top
    that polish out darker than the rest,
Here's sister's looking glass,
    but there never was a sister,
    and it took years to understand
    it was a mirror, not a magnifying glass,
    and why so pointed,
    that mirror about to fall from daddy's table?
    Pull the fingers down to make it round or square,
    but it's on the dresser now, anyway,
    behind cheap jewelry boxes,
    a forest of cosmetics, powder puffs,
    pictures of family feathering the edges,
and here's baby's cradle...
    rocking, rocking, rocking, rocking.
    That's absurd: There wasn't a baby, either.
    "What in the world are you thinking?" she asked.
    He dropped his hands on his lap, looked up slowly,
    "I want a divorce," he replied.



(Ketzer, 12/87)

Punk Rocking at the Skeleton Club in San Diego, 1979

White boys, girls, shake their heads,
leap like tall African warriors
(Sell out to the corporate structure),
bump, push, ricochet round
like street crowds in Berlin
(Sell out and get your pay).
Each song ends, and they fall,
startled statues in a sunless garden
(Sell out to the corporate structure).
Night fails, and the band skulks off
like passing through dimension
(Find a way to get your pay).
The young call from this side:
Blood! Hate! Fear! Death!
(Find a way to get your pay).
And the old answer from the other:
Dachau! Auschwitz! Belsen's breath!
(You'll find a way to get your pay).


(Ketzer, 1979; lyrics within parenthesis by The Dinettes)

Riding the Airlines after a Major Air Disaster

Through the window it occurred to me,
among the seated expectation,
briefcase's sad reflection,
that I'd rather be a sailor
sure to ride the rabid sea
than to let this life let go of me.
I've seen too much of Sagan
dropping feathers of the soul
into the weighted citizenship
of looking-glass black holes.
I don't feel a cosmic race
out there waltzing time away,
and since what we can see
is not enough to say
one way or the other,
I think I'd rather stay,
to drink my days
like scalding tea
and smile to think
God's watching me.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, 1985)

Getting Down

In this town, slow down, let down, back down,
anyway you want down, goddamn downtown,
what's going down, clown, show down,
get down, low down, kneel down,
blow me down, hands down,
this town, mows me down,
I'm down, going down,
crazy down.



(SKJ, 1983)

George Winston

The rustle of people arriving too late;
the dark silhouette of heads, professionals
surprised by the attendance of Bohemians,
and they equally surprised as if
either could claim ownership of a man's genius
that he would be reluctant to claim himself
knowing not from whence it came,
so he let it go to flow and mutate,
repetition being the death of creation.
I mean, it did not sound like the record, but
each autumn leaf fell unique as a snowflake,
and each mind painted it oak or birch,
aspen or maple, flat or curved,
crisp or pliable, pirouetting or gliding on a breeze,
the leaf's journey from stem to ground,
the ages, and back again, if it pleases you,
or not so much the leaf or leaves at all,
but a solitary figure strolling through a wood,
stopping, gazing, listening;
childhood seasons lost
in autonomic ways, the days thereof,
that gathered and gathered up,
turned liquid and ran through the fingers,
so that Winston, a moth dancing about his head,
not satisfied with the given keys,
reaches inside the piano
to softly tap the strings:
Footsteps leaving.


(Ketzer: Winston concert in Little Rock, May 1986)

The Emergency Broadcast System: A Dollop of Dopamine

After reading Orwell’s, 1984 in 1975, I developed a fear of the Emergency Broadcasting System similar to the horror some people experience at seeing clowns or midgets:  Such trepidation may be unfounded, and yet, I get the willies.  To be clear, I don’t fear the system itself (I’m not certain there is a system; after all, there’s no border), but the test, the sound with which we are all familiar, the obnoxious, alien audible, and that pattern: EEE!  EEE!  EEE!  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!  Since the ‘70s, upon hearing the first syllable of that twisted scream, I’ve jumped to turn off the radio or television.  Remote controls made it easier, but if in a position where I can’t reach the set or remote, I cover my ears and sing John Prine’s, Dear Abby, in double time with gusto.  I have similar although lesser consternation for repetitious announcements given in baggage claim areas at airports or subliminal messages in Hollywood movies.  I have the feeling something is up, things are not as they appear, but rather, a devious and sinister plot is upon us, a method of behavior control practiced by our government, not unlike but clearly more surreptitious than campaigns to end smoking, obesity, use of fossil fuels, and to not only accept but wax obsequious and fawning before people and practices once abhorred.  Sometimes, especially being Americans, we balk at instruction, despite all studies, lectures, counseling, PSAs, mandates, regulations and finger wagging of our own children, even if it’s for our own good.  That’s when the government steps in to provide a little nudge, and if the nudge has no effect, then it’s a push, a shove and then….well:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!  I don’t know exactly how it works, when it’s used or for what specific purpose, but I have a theory.  This is not science fiction.  This is possible.  After all, the government doesn’t give away free cell phones, or give anything without ulterior motives.   I believe, at birth, our brains are implanted with a chip, about the size of a Viagra pill, and oddly, with the same shape and color, but that’s only the veneer.  It’s electronic, like a transponder, and whenever they “test” the emergency broadcasting system, give a canned airport announcement, or flash subtle patterns on a Hollywood movie screen, it activates, but just long enough to release a microscopic dollop of dopamine or whatever chemical makes us calm, happy with our lot and as content as California cows—I’ll have to check with my son on this as he studied psychology with some intent; it could be a variety of chemicals…I don’t know.  But, clearly, it’s not working as designed; indeed, it appears to be having the opposite effect, typical of government programs.  Our country is a mess; if it were an airplane, all gauges would be red-lined with stick shakers rattling our teeth, annunciators flashing, horns and bells going off, and the dreaded, “TERRAIN!  TERRAIN!  PULL UP!  PULL UP!”  But that’s only my opinion; we could be doing fine.  I’m sure some would say I need to uncover my ears and hear the siren’s call, remove the scales from my eyes and see.  I don’t know, pal.  If this is the reality I am to accept, I don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want to see it.  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Skin

It has all the strength and elasticity
of a Japanese lantern.
I'm afraid it may not be able
to contain my muscles
much longer, my skin,
like a braut busting open on the grill.
I should stop working out.
Why press my luck?
My father and uncle warned of this
thirty years ago,
bleeding from a scratch,
bruising at a bump,
to say nothing of appearance.
I gave their complaints a shrug,
my IOU now come due.
Yeah, Mick, what a drag,
and Keith Richards,
unless mummified
by cigarettes and booze, knows.
I should start smoking again.
I have the booze down.
What would it matter?


(SKJ, 07/2010)

Frozen Underwear and Bottle Rockets

                Following Marilyn Monroe’s lead, I put my underwear in the freezer, but added socks and

T-shirt.  Prior to dressing for work as a mechanic at an aircraft repair station, I donned the frozen under-things, and was cool, at least for one brief moment.  Temperatures in Little Rock and most of the south had been above 100 for two weeks, hitting 110 a few times.  I worked the night shift, which began at 4 PM and concluded at midnight. Our only relief in the hangar came from floor fans that stood as tall as a man, but in such heat, blew only hot air. On this day, with the hangar full, High Speed Haxby and I had to work on the ramp.  He drew a single engine Beechcraft Bonanza, the owner demanding more cooling from the air conditioner.  (Look, Fella, in this weather, the AC can only do so much.)  Like the aircraft I drew, a West Wind business jet, affectionately known as a “Jew Canoe” since the Israel Aircraft Corporation held the type certificate, the Bonanza sat cooking on the ramp all day.  High Speed crawled down into the fuselage to bleed the system, but soon came crawling back out, his face pale and sweating.  He stood, leaned over, grabbed his knees and puked.  We all got a laugh out of that.  My West Wind was a simple tire change, but when I attempted to jack the right main gear, the jack sank into hot asphalt; I went back in and cut plywood to augment the jack pads.  With the job finished, I opened the cabin door to retrieve the logbook and was pushed back by a horrendous smell.  Apparently, the last passengers dined on lobster, but the flight crew failed to remove the leftovers or dump the potty.   Man, did it reek.

                 Our normal after-work ritual was to pool our money and send someone for beer, the cheapest beer they could find, the desire being quantity, not quality.  But on this night, and with the beer already in coolers, we headed for the Arkansas River to cool off and go for a ride in Tom’s boat.  Consequently, around 3 AM from the darkness of the Arkansas River, a boatload of us laid siege to downtown Little Rock that began with a barrage of bottle rockets and no doubt awoke businessmen and visitors in their high hotels.  Soon a police cruiser showed up at River Front Park and made the mistake of finding us with a spotlight to which we replied with a landing light designed for a Boeing 727 that we had mounted in a cutout gallon milk jug and wired to a 24 volt aircraft battery—you couldn’t leave it on too long or the jug melted.  Our spotlight being much brighter than the cops, theirs went dead, but we heard much yelling and saw them running toward the bank.  After flashing hotels with the landing light, we chose discretion and withdrew in darkness down the Arkansas River, two of us being pulled behind the boat on inner tubes; drunk, of course, and free of life jackets.  By the time we loaded the boat and headed our separate ways, dawn was breaking.  I could tell by the sky, it was going to be another hot one.

(Photograph of the author by Mitch "Sluggo" Easily, 1987, R.I.P., Sluggo)

Playing Bass at the Ernie Pyle Theatre, 1947

This bass man learned to play on an instrument provided by the Red Cross while in a POW camp at Stalag 2B in Germany. After the war, he played and sang jazz and blues in combos from Hot Springs, Arkansas, to Houston, Texas. In 1946, he went back into the service with the Army Air Corps and was sent to Okinawa where his musical talents were discovered by Special Services. He played in a jazz combo that entertained the troops from Tokyo to the Philippines. He also played, sang and acted in shows performed at the Ernie Pyle Theatre in Tokyo, including "Tico-Tico" and "On the Midway."

(Photographs of Steve Ketzer, Sr., Okinawa and Tokyo, Japan, circa 1947, photographers unknown)

Sun's "Good Advice" (Not Taken)

  

Spending too much time in Bill’s Pool Hall and not enough in class, I flunked the 8^th grade.  That failure, along with an early school-year birthday, placed me in draft status while still in high school.  The draft board informed my school that if I didn’t maintain at least a D average, I was theirs.  I graduated with a D+.  It was nip and tuck.  Two weeks after graduation, though, I received the greetings.  I took the induction notice to my father and moaned, “Gee, Dad, what do you think I should do?”  During WWII, my father was one of Darby’s original 500 Rangers, selected in Carrickfergus, North Ireland, and trained by British Commandos in Achnacarry, Scotland.  In 1942 at a place called Dieppe, the Rangers were the first American soldiers to experience combat against the Germans in Europe—the first to kill and be killed—and during every invasion that followed, they, along with paratroopers, led the way, were the tip of the spear.  While on a scouting patrol, my father was wounded and captured by Rommel’s troops at Faid Pass in Tunisia on Valentine’s Day in 1943, just prior to the German rout of the American forces at Kasserine Pass.  Except for three escapes, during one of which he remained free for a month, he spent over two years as a prisoner of war.  He was flown from Tunisia to Italy where he and other POWs were marched through Naples while the Italians lined up to spit and throw garbage.  Eventually, he ended up in Germany and bounced from camp to camp, but spent most of his time at Stalag 2B.  He was liberated by British troops in April of 1945.

Dad read my draft notice and, laughing, threw up his arms and said, “Join the Air Force!  They get coffee and doughnuts every morning!”  I did.  Six months later, following basic training and tech school, I found myself in Vietnam, but in the relative security of Phan Rang Air Base.  I worked in Life Support for a fighter squadron; that is, supporting the life of the fighter jock.  Anything that touched the pilot’s body was my responsibility: helmet, oxygen mask, survival vest, parachute, G-suit, survival seat pack with life raft, &c.  I trained on the equipment’s use, as well as escape and evasion applications. Jocks flying the day’s first sorties showed up all bleary eyed at squadron headquarters around 5 AM where I met them with coffee and doughnuts, suited them up, and sent them on their way to roar into the dawn in camouflaged F-100s.  Mostly due to the equipment, the headquarters building was air conditioned.   I was also responsible for mowing lawns around the building (as I was frequently in trouble), a task I performed wearing a shoulder-length, blond wig—a gift from a jock.  The wig originally belonged to a blow-up doll, the life of the party at the officer’s hooch until, alas, punctured beyond repair.

The job was gravy; the assignment was gravy; no war stories here.  Oh, Charlie lobbed in a few rockets from time to time just to let us know he was out there, but little damage was done, nothing of consequence that I recall.  Phan Rang was a world away from the combat Army grunts and Marines experienced out on the rice paddies or in the jungle.  In fact, we were so secure, those ground pounders came to Phan Rang for in-country R&R.  No doubt about it, we flyboys had it dicked: coffee and doughnuts every morning.  Well, except for the fighter jocks who got shot down, but that happened yet another world away.  I returned to the States physically unscathed.  The worst thing I experienced was the welcome a few college students provided when I passed through San Francisco on my way home to Arkansas.  At that time, troops were required to travel in uniform.  As the harassment increased, the mandate changed to travel in civilian clothes: My America.  After leave, I spent a year on a SAC base outside Columbus, Ohio, then back to a fighter squadron at Keflavik, Iceland, for a year, and then I was out.  I was discharged in New Jersey, having paid my dues for the natural facts, as John Lee Hooker would say.

A decade or so later and free of military obligation, I began to question the old man’s advice.  Killing time at my parent’s house one day, my Dad and I watched television; I stretched out on the sofa and he on his recliner and in charge of the remote as always and flipping channels.  We shot the shit, discussed politics and the war de jour.

“You know, Dad,” I said, “as a man, I feel like I missed something in life by not experiencing combat.”

“Stevie,” he replied, not looking away from the screen and still flipping channels, “you didn’t miss a thing.”




(Photograph of the author by "The Choker"; Phan Rang, Vietnam, 1970)

Taking Five

DELTA OSCAR...SIERRA VICTOR INDIA DELTA ALPHA NOVEMBER INDIA
YANKEE ALPHA...ALPHA UNIFORM FOX...WHISKY INDIA ECHO
DELTA ECHO ROMEO SIERRA ECHO HOTEL ECHO
NOVEMBER...ALPHA DELTA INDIA OSCAR
SIERRA...GOLF OSCAR OSCAR DELTA
BRAVO YANKEE ECHO.

Geisha Leaves Alaska

This geisha came to the United States from Japan via Vietnam. She moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she lived in a glass house for twenty-five years, observing her observers. She moved to Placerville, California, where she lived in her glass house in a storage container's solitude and darkness for a few years before escaping to Fairbanks, Alaska, where she looked out her windows at children playing beneath the midnight sun during summers, yellow birch leaves falling, September snowfalls, northern lights and ice fog during the long winters, moose walking through the yard to nibble on the choke cherry trees and ravens chortling atop tall spruce heavy with snow.

After ten years in Alaska and growing weary of the cold, she rode in the back seat of an old Toyota 4-Runner across the continent to Florida where she now, in her senior years, watches citrus trees blossom and bear fruit and sometimes awakens at night when lightning strikes or large grapefruit fall to earth with a thud. Her glass house, having grown old and fragile would not survive the trip, so she left it in Fairbanks at a landfill transfer station; having never thrown stones, she misses the security and cleanliness it provided. Now dust, always abhorrent, accumulates on her head and mocks her elegance; she is embarrassed by her faded kimono and obi, but, as always, remains silent.

(Photographs by Steve Ketzer, Jr., August 2011: Geisha Leaving Fairbanks)

Saying Uncle

Part of the problem is
you can't say uncle anymore.
In matters of honor,
the important thing
was to fight, win or lose,
and sometimes it was lose,
no matter how hard you fought.
When you felt yourself bettered,
beaten, hurt and in pain,
you could always say uncle.
No, pal, you didn't pull a knife or gun;
that's the coward's way.
If defeated, you admitted defeat,
but your honor was safe:
You fought,
stood up for yourself,
a friend, a loved one.
You said uncle reluctantly,
and the fight ended,
sometimes with a handshake.
But no more.
They just keep beating and beating.
Any big brother is off fighting wars.
No one steps in to say,
"Hey, leave that kid alone; he's had enough,"
fearing the pack will turn on them,
and so the beating continues.
A nation of cowards...indeed, but
in the event you couldn't hear me
over the crack of knuckle on bone,
the smack of fist in blood,
and the crunching of teeth: Uncle.
I said, Uncle!


(SKJ/May 2012)

Grief Counseling

There was a certain art to,
around Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1968,
hitting a highway sign with a beer bottle,
not your typical brown bottle, but
a clear glass quart, Big Cat Malt Liquor,
maybe Colt .45, one of several purchased by
a kind, black gentleman on Malvern Avenue
and emptied between four or five white friends
in a '55 or '56 Chevy, '58 VW Karmann Ghia, to
the sound of Cream, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin,
and the Rolling Stones

(children were off the streets; families at home where they belonged,
finishing dinner and getting ready for The Ed Sullivan Show or Laugh-In),

and it wasn't tossed from the passenger side
either, anyone could do that, lean out and lob it up there,
no, but from the driver's side, over the roof
with your left hand as you drove with the right,
70,
80,
90
miles per hour,
time and space, hand-eye coordination,
so that,
the bottle whopped the sign, and rang like, well,
Pasquier, 

(Guillaume, Guillaume, thou art the biggest, and Pasquier the least, and yet Pasquier
beats thee hollow.  Those who can hear, I'll engage, hear more of him than of thee.)

just as it passed the passenger window.
If you hit it, and I often did,
man,
you were the cat's ass, as Dad would say,
and no need to expand on the laughter,
the dash and thigh slapping applause.  Of
course, there were rumors of broken bottles
re-entering passenger windows
and slashing the throats of those passengers,
but I never saw it happen. Anyway,

later,
1, 2 AM, bottles emptied and thrown, Track
Drive Inn cruised, Central Avenue and the fountain cruised,
infrequent but necessary fist fights, it was out 70 West
and the slow drive over Sunshine Road
to take Patrick home and stopping on that road
under star filled nights--so many stars back then--and
the sheriff's deputy pulling up.

"What y'all boys doin'?"

"Just had to take a piss, sir."

"Well, I know what that's like. Y'all been drinkin'?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yeah, well...Y'all boys better get on home, now."

"Yes, sir.  That's where we were headin', sir."

And we did, and
no one shot any one in high school,
and grief counselors did not exist.


(Son and Father Renga, 1999)

Cape San Blas Haiku

smell of ocean
sound of surf

                                                 walking dogs on deserted beach
                                                 at sunrise
                                                 picking up sea shells

               dogs running off leash
               dancing in sand
               laughing with masters

                                                                                                       and she so serious
                                                                                                       squatting on sand
                                                                                                       picking up dog shit

                                                                           perfectly pink
                                                                           and smaller than a fingernail
                                                                           a scallop shell on the sand

through the sand dune greenery
even the humble rat
leaves a trail

heads through balcony rails
dogs watch bobbing lizard

following coastline
a flight of army black hawks beating
hooah
hooah
hooah


                                                                                            dogs playing in surf
                                                                                            running from waves laughing
                                                                                            smell of ocean

                                surf casters stand waist deep
                                then chest deep in wave
                                as pelicans fly overhead

                                                                                               blue angels over ocean
                                                                                               red umbrella on beach

smell of ocean
sound of surf


                   black kite with a long rainbow tail
                   flying high
                   over the gulf of mexico

                                                                                         grey dolphins
                                                                                         arc through green waves
                                                                                         thunderstorm approaches

                                         lightning strikes ocean
                                         thunderstorm
                                         moves toward shore


smooth and refreshing
superior drinkability
bud light beer

seabirds and swallows
fly for shelter
rain starts to fall

                                         rain on beach sand
                                         smell of boiling shrimp
                                         sound of distant thunder

                 sun sets in ocean
                 horizon grows faint, stars bold
                 sound of surf

                                                                                                                     family at low tide
                                                                                                                     flashlights swinging
                                                                                                                     young girl screams

         windows open front and back
         sea breeze at night

smell of ocean
sound of surf



(SKJ, May 2012)