Poetry: Shots and Jabs

I was 18, standing in a line or queue up of young men like me,
Kennedy was dead and LBJ faced off with a cool-named
guy called Barry Goldwater. It was basic military training
in San Antonio, Texas, near where I would later spend
more than 16 years of my life.

Up ahead stood four medical corpsmen with what looked like
space age weapons called jet gun vaccinators, with small
deadly vials on top and compressed air hoses attached.
Later they learned these were spreading diseases
like hep-c, luckily not into me.

When the corpsman’s aim was bad, a sliced bleeding arm
could send a sad lad to fainting, out cold, falling,
rolling down the nearest bloodstained hill.
We got so many shots
we had to keep a little yellow book as a shot record,
that included things like typhoid and yellow fevers.
And other shit I’d never heard of or wanted.

They call it parenteral since you don’t swallow it
(remember polio vaccine on the sugar cubes?)
so the names are always intra-something like
-muscular, -venous, -cardiac, -articular; and get this,
intracavernous is a jab at the base of a man’s penis to
check and treat for erectile dysfunction.

I’ve had so many shots and jabs, most required for my job,
as military we go to places folks have such diseases.
Now, I’m a walking pharma needing boosters for old men.
I took the second of the new shingles jab last week, next month
they will shoot me with the flu (extra strength for old farts),
a disease I may get anyway — like I did last year.

I saw an advertisement for old people to get whooping cough shots
so as not to infect the young ones, who spend a good bit
of their time infecting the older ones. I think my whooping
immunity was the hosting of the disease itself, as it was with
mumps and measles and who knows what all I got into.
The chicken pox never really left, ergo shingles.

Nowadays, I get my shots at the grocery store along with
bread and milk and maybe some wine. No white clad corpsman,
no jet guns or four shots at a time. I decide. Three different
shingles shots and six weeks with a case of that pox-related
nightmare virus, I sure hope my immune system
fends off any of that painful shit, shingles.

 

Look both ways and thank science and immunity for better health
at the cost a poke. Mind the gaps,
a compromised immune system invites trouble.

Sammi’s Weekend Prompt #126: Haven

Unable to sleep, I wrote two poems.

***

With no refuge, unrequited love
without heavenly haven,
without healing, without beginning
or end. When a kiss is not a kiss,
when one love is lost in lonely
pain, unable to mend.

***

how can we ever be happy
alone in this depressing darkness
void of all meaningful life
enduring these threats from a determined death
never knowing how or when, it will all end?

***

Look both ways, the yin and the yang.
Mind the gap hiding good news and bad.

Poetry Report: September Poems

Hello, October; goodbye September for another year. For some of us, the march of time is the welcome process of growing up, while others (like me) are alarmed by rapidly advancing days.

Where I live, this year’s September had more days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit than ever, by a large number. Technically, it’s now Autumn. Climatologically, it’s not even close. And some rain, please! (Welcome to Texas)

Personally, it has been a difficult and challenging month for me with family issues demanding my attention and needing my practical and emotional participation. Some of that drama, fear, and heartache are rolled into my poems. But not as much as I would have expected. I did not like the shit storms at all, but I was grateful for the emotional fodder. For me, this is often less craft and more about the art of breaking things. I do like the feeling of being useful and having a purpose.

Thirty days hath September and I wrote 30 more poems. I wrote more on some days because when Muse speaks, I write, but those extras don’t count for the dailies. The titles of the daily poems were:

  1. Sit on my lap Forever
  2. Disrespectful Dress
  3. See Bugs Try
  4. When It’s Real
  5. Sometimes, It is Something
  6. Sit Up
  7. Monet at Kimbell
  8. Pissing Inappropriately
  9. Boys Only
  10. Watching the World go by (standing by a busy interstate highway)
  11. Pat’s Day
  12. Old Hank
  13. The Genocide of Humanity
  14. Those Tears Count
  15. Delicate
  16. Longer Nights
  17. Bureaucratic Control
  18. Skinny Short People
  19. Best and Worst
  20. Under the Red Veil
  21. Barter
  22. So They Say
  23. Global Baking
  24. No Innocents
  25. Cutthroat
  26. The Young Turks
  27. Good Enough
  28. The Ultimate Ultimatum
  29. Prim’s not Proper
  30. My Coffee

Look both ways, but what matters most is that it is officially Fall,
the third season. A beautifully decorative time of year.
While we should always mind the gaps, we should also enjoy the time.

 

Sammi’s Weekend Prompt #125

The Ultimate Ultimatum

Change or die, our battle cry. As timid souls faced this demise, new courage grew. Fear pierced our eyes, go back we said, she shall not die. An evil demon claimed ours for his, a demand which struck our faith with courage. Wisdom claimed hope and reason. Rising from ashes our claim is this, from us her life shall not be taken.

(word count 62, not including title)

Look both ways. It is what you think it is,
but mind the gaps where secrets hide .

Poetry: Forgave You – Not

I opened the door and walked into a crowded room.
People, most I did not know, were sitting around,
all seats taken. I had a right to be, and should have been,
invited to the meeting, but since I’m a half-breed — excluded.

Everyone stopped talking and stared at me. I knew I was
the unwanted black sheep in a room of wolves and vultures,
there only to devour carrion and pick the bones of the dead.
Something in my nature delighted in their obvious discomfort.

They declared the meeting over and said I should have
been there. I did not ask the location of my invitation.
I thought, y’all low life vulture mother fuckers,
but I said, “No problem. Things will somehow work out.”

Oh, the sweet feeling of justice and the touch of revenge,
oh, the fine fit of the suit called, we’re even.
Did they think I would not know or gain?
I almost felt guilty for twisting the knife,
but guiltlessly I prompted their pain.
Putting things right feels real nice.

Look both ways in rooms empty or full.
Mind the gaps. That’s where the evil hides.

Poetry: Boys Only

Jimmy and me, and his sister June,
all about the same age
of seven or eight were standing
in the alley behind my house.

On that day I did not know
that in seven or eight more years,
me and June would share the experience
of lost virginity, the one and only day
she did not spurn my teenage romantic advances.

We three friends were all shirtless and discussing
whatever pre-pubescent children talked about
in the 1950s, when the shrill voice of their aunt
Dorothy demanded June not remain shirtless.

June did not get a satisfactory answer to her ‘why?’
(did we ever?), only that girls don’t do topless.

I looked June over, brown hair to barefoot toes
and could see no reason but forced socialization
of such things was commonplace and
in some circles probably still is.

Jimmy and his aunt died years ago. June is
a great-grandmother and we don’t keep in touch.
That’s too bad. I wonder what June remembers.

Look both ways before removing your shirt in the alley behind my house.
Mind the gaps, not the nipples, and aunt Dorothy, too.

Sammi’s Weekend Prompt 123 – Delicate

Sometimes, when it’s dark
and extremely cold,
you can go outside
into the wash of crystal clean mystery,
of frigid stillness soundlessly
covering your world,
perhaps luck will let you discover
the delicate beauty of freshly falling flakes
of glimmering clean dry ivory snow
seen by streetlights slowly drifting,
like tiny feathers floating down
to find fellows resting
on the ground or drifting
onto your warm hand,
there to melt and vanish,
or you may scoop some up
and with the soft warm vapor of your breath
gently sending angels
of transparent virgin weightless grains
of magic floating freely through
the colorless clean comfort of night.

Look both ways, up and down, mindful of gaps unseen.

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Poetry: For a Little While

For a little while longer
I will annoy you with my
banal sarcasm, seasoned
with a pinch of wit.

For a little while longer
I will stare into your eyes—
making you uncomfortable.
I may annoy your sensitivity

With wise cracks or politically
incorrect observations of truth,
but only for a little while longer.

Until I stop, I will stake my claim
to a share of our relationship.

I may touch you, hug, or even kiss you
for a little while longer, and for as long
as I can. For a little while longer,
maybe forever, I will continue
to love you.

Of the forever possibilities, we’re all ignorant.
Look both ways here and now.
Do it now, say it now, mindfully minimize the gaps.

Sammies Weekend Writing Prompt 122 — Museum

Monet at Kimbell

Not a big fan of Claude,
I wanted the experience
of seeing his original later work
at the Kimbell Art Museum
in Fort Worth.

In Cow Town, I ran
marathons and we danced
at Billy Bob’s near the stockyards,
and went to see Elvis, Marty Robbins,
and two of our three were born there.

A shining light of cowboy culture,
the Kimbell is one of many
attempts to not be Dallas.
DF dubya is nearby and
Cowboys play football in Arlington,

where the Rangers play baseball
and Six Flags (over Texas)
amusement park resides.
But what is most important
is not the museum or foot races,
not the water garden or train station,

what matters most to me about Cow Town
are the memories. The comrades, the friends,
the scandals and the hanky-panky,
the music (up against the wall, redneck mother)
Oh Lord, I knew it all so well.

But gunna miss the Monet.

Look both ways between Dallas and Fort Worth (I love you).
Mind the endless gaps in between.