My Guy Lied

 My guy lied as a 16 yr old to jump into Gates of the Montain fire and within a relatively short time was a persona non grata in Laos. Interesting people at his funeral, Hmong, retired spec force brass, a couple of people nobody knew who didn't speack to anybody, and a few guys who were with him "out there". His wife, who knew he had many secrets and was not just making a life "buying and selling timber" whispered in my ear "I half expected these vet guys, I knew he wasn't just a supply captain in Viet Nam. But what did he have to do with those Arab guys in the corner?"

***

 That's a cool movie for sure where you put away the pop corn and the bong, well, maybe the first time, and dig it in different ways especially if you kinda nod off while your watching it. But I don't know, maybe one could try the Ben Franklin trick where you hold a nine pound cannon ball in your hand while sitting in a chair...then boom when you nod off, quick write down your dreams, do it long enough they find you in another county having taken the neighbor's bananna bike with sparklers in the handles, all the way to another county where the difference between sleep and waking is less relevant, though downstairs neighbors might turn on you...then of course there is always writing yourself to sleep where you try to keep writing while you empty your mind and let in the undertow like the time you had the wheezing from the onset asthma and that sound in your chest wass that of a weak baby crying and you were hiding in the coats in the corner of the gym at the dance where everyone threw their coats and you were sure someone had a baby and hid it there and you went digging for it but instead found only Play It As It Lays with this wooden cover and a rusty hinge binding no baby no baby half awake what is that sound in my chest still writing letting go wondering how is it that that shadow seems to be casting the tree and the wind is like a breath this slow thing ever being pronounced never being said the baby below the book whining how did you get here did you believe all of their lies or just pretend as an excuse landing in the water instantly forgetting everything else in that instant coming up to surgeons wearing rings on their plastic gloves with tiny baby heads as he sticks an instrument in your side, the nurse said with a smile painted on her mask, you know, that's right it is the Jesus side, and the Dr. says intercranial my ass this stupid bastard insists fish have feelings peddling in the wind with it like you are the smallest part of an unknowable word with the wind as the wind reacing the ear like light the eye the constant speed of meaning every flower a revolution a dried up forgotten memory of a kiss singing about guns and losing the branches the veins in her eye the baby crying again oh fuck it i'll go ahead and take the prednazone now...

 ***

If we kill your children we'll say they were not yours, if you hold their broken bodies up to the sky screaming God is Great we will say you're nothing but hate. If you say we stole it all and that we have not right to exist we'll say you never did - as our wish to erase you explodes in your home. Whatever we say to whoever is there, whatever eerie voice echoes the call to prayer, no matter if you spend four generations in a sewer it will not really matter who you think you were. And if you don't wish to see your village burn don't even mention the right of return. Go now, bury your dead, put them back together if you can. Give us all your cannons, give us all your bombs, give us all your newsmen singing our song. But if you are ungrateful and don't watch where her heart throws her will drive our resolve right over in a bloody bulldozer. For we are just like you. We mean no harm. Any of these evils were clearly the accidents one must accept. If you disagree, go ahead, grab your rock and throw it at our tank, go ahead and pick up your bullhorn and stand in front of us with your US Passport hanging round your neck. We have always been your friend. Everyone knows what we will never admit. Everyone knows. This isn't no bible, this ain't no Koran, it's it's a long short story by Joseph Conrad.

***

I dont know how we got there you couldn't see anything outside. It was crazy. She was half wild when I told her she reminded me of the pink leather fringe girl with the fancy shooter who shot the side view of Crazy Horse in a shiny piece of sheet metal. She groaned from the deep buy Edgar Fucking Caycee here a drink. We were supposed to go ice fishing. We never made it. "I lived in a hail of bullets," she said, and kissed me on the lips, hard, right in front of Roy who she had just introduced me to as her husband. And just as I thought you know I think he's gonna bring one up he did and that was the last thing I remember till The Wizard brought me too still laughing saying how she had been kidnapped just that night by two guys who broke out of the pen where her husband worked and was always on about his Dodge Challenger how wasn't anything in Deer Lodge County could touch it so these guys broke out and went straight to his house cause they knew right where to find the keys and wrestled the shotgun out of her hands but not before she got off a shot. So they took her as a hostage but it was already too late as they moved under the heavy sky hoping ride ahead of the storm but the road block was there and as they slowed down figuring they'd just go back to their cells she screamed gun it you fucking dick heads or we're all dead meat and so they did just as the first rounds marimba'd into the grill and the impact rather than pulverizing them launched them up in the air, a quiet moment in the sky among the first snowflakes of a long sock and the falling tinkle of buckshot. Not a scracth she screeched, yelping back shots, not a scratch.

I didn't want to go back inside but Roy insisted he buy me some Jack. We got into how most people before they get too drunk are lucky to have more than two stories to tell, and he promised me, right then and there, no matter what, if he outlived me, he would go to my funeral. Gave me a card that he scrambled some fuzzy inkling of who he was. Like in the future, dying, I'd be like "oh, shit, better call what's his name, Roy, and tell him so he can get here before they plant me. I mean, Roy said over and over again as the shots lined up, you never know who you're gonna have to save in this shit hole paradise. I can't remember what the two stories were, The Wizard says that's because I always tell them when I get drunk, and honestly, it's been years. Years. Like, granpa used to say, it barely happened.