Tire Pressure

Whenever adding air to tires, always spit on your finger and put that slime on the valve stem. If it makes bubbles, that's your air leak. Buy a tool and tighten the valve core--cheap fix.  I learned that trick from my father in 1956 at the age of six while airing up bicycle tires, but it works equally well for motorcycle, automobile and aircraft tires.  It would work on the Space Shuttle, F-22 and F-35 tires, but we killed that technology birthing happy-dance puppets, so those tires no longer require inflation.


(Photograph by Steve Ketzer, Sr.)

Between Heaven and Hell

Sometimes there is only God, whether

a God skulking in black holes of

mind or scintillating light

years in all opposite

directions, whether

active, passive,

many, one, or

none,

I

choose

not to believe in

man, because I am, but

to believe in the possibility of

love and perfection and do not blame

my lack of these on snapdragons and daisies.

(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, May 19, 1985;
Blind contour sketches of the poet by Beverly McLarty, 1983 or so)

The High Country

I haven't hiked the high ground
or picked a flower there,
but I've seen them pressed in books;
their blood stained pages show
another world of wild flowers
than you and I can't know.

Still, I think they should suffice,
these hills we have at hand,
as long as we can climb them,
though up and down we go,
and pick a simple flower
the high ground doesn't grow.


(The Sentinel-Record, Hot Springs, AR., April 20, 1985)

Ice Water and the Mockingbird

Across the asphalt wet with mirage he goes,
mockingbird walking with quick stick legs.
This same bird sang last spring,
but today he's far too hot to sing,
hurries with his head down,
beak open (he doesn't see me),
wings raised,
and I thought I was suffering,
sitting inside on the hangar floor,
a glass of ice water at my lips.

I rattle the cubes;
he snaps an eye in my direction.
I offer him the glass,
but his wings burst into grey-white fans,
and off he goes,
above the brown grass.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, August 10, 1986)

The Veteran

"I moved for my health; winters in Wisconsin
were getting too hard on me.  It's the lungs.
I was a POW, worked the coal mines in Japan
for three years," he shrugged, embarrassed.

"My father was a POW in Germany," I said,
guess you guys had it a little worse."

"Oh, I don't know, maybe sometimes. My boat
got blown out of the water. I bobbed around,
finally washed ashore on Bataan, and they decided
to keep me," he smiled.  "I weighed 155 then;
when I got out, I weighed 90."

"I can't imagine it," I said, shaking my head.

"I was one of the lucky ones. I'm 64 now.
Besides, everyone has something to go through.
I can never quite get it out of my mind, though.
I mean, I don't dwell on it all the time,
but sometimes I just...I don't know.
I like to fish; that's my therapy;
Just sit there and look at the water."


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, November 17, 1985)

Africa on a Plate

This liver looks like Africa,
the onions like great white chains.
There's a fried vessel where the Nile should be,
a hole for Lake Victoria,
Libya up there oozing bile
(I jab it with my fork), and
South Africa sick with cirrhosis.
Turn the plate around: Look at it.
This organ produces red blood,
it seats emotions,
metabolizes minds;
it's cooked,
too well done,
burnt
and curling up on the edges,
getting ready to cave into itself,
a ball of meat, wrapped in slimy chains.
I didn't order this.
Take it away, quickly.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, June 29, 1986)

Mammoth on the Metro Mall

I hear heels behind me
playing red cobbles
on the Metro Mall,
hard heels in a hurry,
four, five pair of
clattering castanets,
and it's not so much
the lack of synchronicity, 
the unmanly pandemonium,
but the pace,
the quick and robotic click
of heel succeeding heel
that makes me think
I must seem like
some old mammoth
plodding through a bog,
a caveman, to be certain.
I push up a sleeve
on my Einstein sweat shirt.
Closer now,
a dozen yoked
behind me.
If I weren't a mechanic,
I might be frightened, and
yet, I couldn't block their way
if I wanted to,
so I draw in my shoulders,
and they pass on either side,
burst into the vision like a dream,
and look how pretty they are!
Coiffed and made-up, suited,
important, metropolitan,
energetic, athletic,
intelligent...
I light a cigarette,
scratch the beard:
Fare-thee-well!
Fare-thee-well, ladies!


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 4, 1987)