man of the year
seen too much aflame
hides in basements
cobwebbed by guilt
jumps into his short
rides full speed
down deadend street
can't sleep
monkey gods in dreams
nightmare his hovel
his wakeup screams
shatter neighbors' sleep
THEY know he's crazy
"shouldn't be allowed
to live here & what about
our kids? what'll he
do to them some weteyed
morn when he can't stop
crying in the hallway?"
grabbing at each passerby
as though they could help
as though they'd even WANT

man of the year
turned all his medals in
ripped out all the tubing
ran out into the rain his
hospitalgreen gown a
camouflage against the
lawn the guards were
told to hold their fire
"He's harmless, boys"
disappointed in their eyes
told how they'd been
cheated another crazy's
scalp to dangle from a
brasstothed, gleaming
some invisible textbandolier

man of the year
up the mainstream
without a paddle
drifting in dreamscheme
he'd lived with for so long
"So long," he'd said
to wife & child one morn
& climbed aboard the
PanAm winged cigar
for airconditioned flight
to swelter of the jungle's
canopy where footlong
centipedes could kill a
man in madness underground;
the tunnels were what,
in the end, had reached
some invisible texthim

man of the year
don't need no bars, no cars
Jack Daniel's might as
well be piss on ice
as far as he's concerned
his only sane remembrance is
of golden daughter's smile
he waved back at, offhandedly,
across the tarmac sunrise dawn
"Goodbye, Honey. Daddy
will be back before
you know it." a million
years ago; he came back
before HE even knew it
now walks in monstershamble
through a world he no longer
some invisible textsees

man of the year
now lionized & recognized
he's the center of a storm
that doesn't touch him
truth to tell, he really
couldn't care less; just
that, sometimes, he could
use a little silence, a
respite from the screams
the dreams, the demons
of charred figures running
yet already dead; his head
is burning in the night:
no one is left to lead him
some invisible texthome

man of the year
just another whitecross name
dogtagged like prime meat
spoiling in some locker
government inspected and
approved, but no one knew
exactly what to do with it
& left it in the sun to
some invisible textmaggotize

he's really dead
& safely so;
no daughter's
sunlight tears
will bring him
back;
roundeyed sadnesses
are not his lot;
some invisible texthis plot

is filled
&
he's a ghost now,
waiting to be
exorcised
so the living can
"put it all behind them"

this poem is only
meant to be
an homage
to the
deadman
invisible textof
invisible textXthe
inviisible textXXyear

THE OLD GUARD
some invisible text -- for Bill Ehrhart

we came late to the "Revolution"
and-having just fought a war-
it all seemed just a bit
too tame, too remote
to warrant more than just
our passing interest:
the world had changed;
so central to our lives
had been the fact of death,
the counting of the days
and their minutest portions,
that to see each sunrise
come-then go in peace-
without the need to mark
its passage with relief,
made of us strangers,
intruders in the normal
course of things, and
beggars where no need
existed--still,
we lingered on, timewarped
and helpless as the decade
fled;
and monuments, parades and
speeches told us that at last
we'd finally--we'd BETTER be-
satisfied, at rest.
the problem is it seems,
that monuments console the living,
give honor to the dead,
while speeches only guarantee
that, given time, there'll
soon be ample need to build
still more.

these refined differences, now,
they're all I see
that make divisions of the days
and weeks and months
as age becomes
less the counting of my years,
more the marking of their passage.

TOI COM BIET^**

have monuments, then, of granite
or of marble;
veined surfaces whose traceries
belie the tactile sense:
we would touch each of these,
our brothers, sisters all,
and braille the alphabets of names
in dumbshow ritual.
each of these is loss
and each a memory
that our continued decades
build upon:

V - the bas-relief in black against the hillside
V - the hand upraised to show the folks back home
V - the tunnels' chevron'd passageways
V - the victory at Hue that broke our hearts

V

the upside-down and sideways
version of the truth
that shouted from the portico
of presidents

V

the neverending everflowing intravenous
river of the blood...
and still it flows

V

that haunts varieties of dreams

till we awake in sudden fury,
try to gentle jungle'd hearts

not for us:
the Victory
the luxury of still pretending
we can ever be alone.
some invisible textXXXXXXXXXX^**Vietnamese: "I do not understand"

LINDA'S POEM -- 5/19/92
some invisible text-- To love is to battle..."
some invisible textXXXXOctavio Paz, SUNSTONE

you came with me
to The Wall,
where death's total
is increased
by subtraction;
witnessed a blind ritual;
memory imprints names
as well as bodies,
they
are remembrances of then;
you
are a memory of now;

how could you know?
some words
need no speech;
I was
and often am
moved to tears;
you caught them
in my stance
in the way I realized
a stolen past;

we have a photograph;
it will not
as my words will not
prevent the building
of yet other Walls...
my son's,
or his
or multiples of generations
who can grant to others
easy recognition
of a thought that's cost
the lives of hearts;
embedment in the earth is
love's sole, permitted solace;

I left a book,
you caught my image...
how could you know that,
ghostly against ghost,
my life is more than one,
less than two that make a whole?

what I impart is
more a sad than
terrible secret,
etched as shadow
of the World I know;

how could you know
till now
I had never been there
with anyone I loved
who was
still alive?