what do we do

what do we do
when things
are more real
than they ought
by rights to be
when some moments
hurt more than
we can explain
like the mortally
wounded meg ryan
saying leave
me your m16
in courage under
fire like warren
oates in two lane
blacktop saying he
was sick and tired
of people getting
in his car and
telling lies or
like in the wild
bunch when pike bishop
said let's go or
when that three-year-
old boy stood by
the open coffin at
his father's funeral
in a bad translation
called the wrath of god
and told the preacher
his daddy was going
to heaven in a boat

father of the man

my son had a schwanz
as big as mine
when he was ten years old
but as he matured
how was i to know
i would one day grow
even smaller

whenever i reach back

whenever i reach back
into the past
to beg forgiveness
from one of you
i'm often stupefied
that those i've wronged can recall
how great it still feels
to be so fucking pissed off

death is not

death is not
a person to me not
an individual like lucifer which
is kind of odd
i guess
for i give names
and faces
to most all of them
god jesus mary
mother of
excepting of course
the "holy" ghost
but ghosts aren't
supposed to be real anyway
are they and death
is not much different
you might agree
but when we're off and gone
i do have to wonder
if any name is waiting there
to tell our names to

here we all are

here we all are
scribbling in rapturous release
and blood red love
over the loss of our children
which is heartening
in a way for there was a time i thought
i was the only one
now here comes mary jo bang
here comes wanda coleman
and multitudes more
holding hands like compassionate friends
until we each
are given to know
how things are meant to be
that this death
bestows the very breath
in you and me

part of world war ii

part of world war ii
was the taste
of hershey's chocolate
when i was in the third grade
at berryhill elementary
and would get off
the school bus
at logan's dairy farm
where mr. logan kept
melted hershey chunks
in a big vat
to measure out into
the milk cans for
chocolate milk and most every friday
he would give me a wrapped up
broke off piece of hershey's to take home
that was bigger than
two candy bars
which mama made me save up till
saturday night
when she would pack a picnic basket
and daddy would drive us out
to morris field
to watch the a-20's come in
and crash which happened
a good bit maybe
three or four times a month with
the saturdays being
the best of all
and drew some pretty big crowds
not that the army would
ever let you get near them
except that one time a pilot overshot
the runway and went down
in the middle of wilkinson boulevard
and had traffic so tied up
it took forty minutes till anybody could get moving
so much time that i ate
all my hershey's and got
sick and had to stand outside of the car
in the red lights from
the ambulance and mama said well that is
the last time you ever bring that stuff
home with you
but daddy put on his deep foreman's voice
like he would use at u. s. rubber
and said now eva
where is your heart anybody can see
the boy has got the flu
aint that right jimmy i told her
to bring you a sweater
but that was the last time i ever ate hershey's
and to this day i tend to favor
the kind they make in england
that has these bubbles in it that
you can't taste the chocolate right at first
and then it explodes
when you don't expect it
till all of a sudden it's all inside your cheeks
and it has a real different taste too
but if you don't have
any teeth like me and you're not careful
it will sometimes drool out
the corner of your mouth like the blood used to look
in a black and white movie
when a jap pilot got shot down which
made people feel good and forget some of the awful
things going on
in the rest of the world
like after the war mama and daddy were running
a little convenience store
in kannapolis and living
in two rooms at the back when daddy
fell over and died from a stroke
before i could even get there
and by the time i flew in from atlanta for the funeral
somebody's little kid
was sitting in the candy aisle at the store
with a whole box
of hershey bars between his legs
but mama didn't care
not me either not even if it
gave him the flu

well at last

at first i thought
it was just me
but i'm beginning
to sense it
in the others too
a gradual acceptance
no more pretense
just watching waiting
the way jennifer is
quick to forgive me
for wanting to skip
one of my days
or when robert says
don't feel guilty
dad mom doesn't know
if you're there
or not like say
somebody stops by
to surprise her
and she goes how sweet
why don't you get
under the covers
with me where
it's warm even if
the visitor is only
her dead  sister
patsy ruth
and it's back
to when
they were just kids
and used to play
little women
trading places till
they forget
which one is it
wading out
to greet her death
their jo
or
their beth