My peeps hang out at the VA clinic in Austin.
I know none of them. Prolly agree with very few about a lot of things. It’s okay.
It took six months to get two appointments coordinated
(it’s a long drive), but I like it here (not sure why).
(Almost) all the paid staff and volunteers seem nice
and tolerant (from what I’ve seen, they need to be).
Eye exam. Will I see an optimistic optometrist
or a pessimistic ophthalmologist? New script
and my cataract is ready for R&R (remove and replace).
The drop dead gorgeous (and friendly) young lady in the glasses shop said I looked like Bryan Cranston (showed me an old pic of him) from Breaking Bad.
Go ahead, make an old vet smile, and feel good.
Couple years back a dude came in, sat down to wait,
pulled out his gun and blew his brains out. Yikes!
I guess he wasn’t there to get new glasses.
Some of us got some serious shitty problems.
Later, about half-past noon I got some new hearing aids.
Rechargeables because I drain batteries binge watching House on TV
streaming on Bluetooth. Thank you. I like them.
I am a veteran eligible for most VA services, either alive or dead.
I’m a vet but no old fart hats for me.
I’m neither proud (okay, a bit) nor ashamed of that fact.
Like being old, bald, male, or a Texas Aggie,
it’s just who and what I am. No changes.
Look both ways and see it all.
Mind the gaps, some of us need more help than others.
Ten years my junior, and this pic of Cranston’s character (Walter White) is old.
Friday is another fictioneers day and Saint Paddy’s Day. I’m mostly Irish, but I never drink green beer and I seldom eat corned beef and cabbage. Who tells a better story than an old Irishman? Who does a better poem read than a young, attractive Irish actor?
Unable to find a suitable Irish lad or lass, Mistress of her storybook realm of fibs and fables, Rochelle, in her high magnificentness, dove down under to Australia. From there, she has shanghaied the prompt photo from Rowena Curtin to lead us into the temptation of creating a complete story with fewer than 101 words.
Click on Rowena’s pic to get the lowdown from Sydney on Rochelle’s blog page. When you’ve written your scoop, you can post it with all the other glorious wonders on inlinkz dot com (see Tim’s photo at the bottom of this blog).
If you can do this (and you certainly can), we promise to read it and comment (nicely) with hopes of delightful reciprocation.
Genre: Biographical Fiction
Title: Decisions Made
Word Count: 100
***
He felt betrayed. Trapped. Cheated. Conflicted. Confused. Rage simmered, but what burned him up most was his own self-pity. He was numb. What could he do?
Escape to Canada was wartime treason. If he joined the Army as a rifleman (eleven bravo), he’d be forced to kill or to die. He wanted neither. Everyone he knew would consider him a coward.
The walls closed in. What to do?
He could fight and die in a just war. This one was unjust.
He relented and lived through it all.
Then he wrote about it. Now they would all know his truth.
***
Look both ways because “the bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over.”
Mind the gaps because “you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead.” (Quotes are from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien)
Click on Tim O’Brien to read more micro-fiction stories drawn from Rowena’s photo.
Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and to read more 63 word poems or prose.
Down Together
Helicopters are big-ass, noisy targets — preferred bullseyes for AKs or rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers. They’d get enemy kills and loot from the dead machine with one lucky shot.
To live, we flew high or desperately, dumbass low — at treetop levels or less. Other altitudes made things too easy for them. They heard us coming. We did our best to live and to kill.
Look both ways and be a zigzagging target. It’s hard to hit what’s moving.
Mind the gaps so you know where the shots came from.
The video with this Billy Joel song is six minutes, but it was my inspiration to the prompt word.
This poem was rendered to meet today’s dVerse challenge offered by Paeansunplugged from Delhi. We are to write about the good and evil in mere mortals, the good in evil and/or the evil in good. For me, at no time is that enigma more profound than in times of war and battle.
Conundrum War
One story I’ve never told,
a confession…
if evil were evil enough,
if good were good enough,
I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage…
but courage, too, has finite quantities,
yet it offers hope and grace to the repetitive coward.
I can’t fix my mistakes.
Once people are dead, I can’t make them undead…
killing and dying are not my special province.
Am I too good for this war?
Too smart, too compassionate, too everything?
I’m above it. It’s a mistake, maybe.
Look both ways at good and evil or take Hamlet’s advice and think it so.
Mind the gaps between and within our perceptions of what is better and what is truth.
Since the American government still had an active conscription/draft system, I enlisted during my senior year in high school (1964). I eventually went to college after four years in the U.S. Air Force, which would later result in my first of three closely related “career” choices.
In May of ’66, I married Yolonda. More than half of our first two years together were spent as 20/21/22-year-olds living and working in Ankara, Turkey. I was not sent to Viet Nam. Happy Honeymoon.
I started college in September of 1968, as one of what would become known as Vietnam Era Veterans. I registered as a sophomore transfer from the University of Maryland, Overseas Division.
The Viet Nam War was raging and nearing its high-point years. LBJ was about finished. The Tet Offensive had hardened much more of U.S. public opinion against the war. While not ambivalent, I disagreed with both sides of the argument at that time. I was confused, as were many Americans. I had two short term goals: graduate and get a job. Yolonda was the Brazos County Attorney’s Secretary at the time. Every cop in the county knew her.
We lived in “on campus” student housing. Our “home” was a small one bedroom, one bath, unairconditioned apartment in southeast, central Texas. We eventually bought and installed a window a/c unit.
The campus library was my retreat, a place to read, study, and to people-watch. At the time, everyone exiting the building was forced to have their possessions searched to prevent theft.
One evening, Yolonda waited for me at that library while I was part of a psych department research study. I found her waiting in our car. She asked me if I would know if my penis was exposed out of my pants. She had been cock-flashed by a student employee. The perv got busted, and we’ve been sharing the experience for fifty-plus years. They are everywhere.
I’m writing this while sitting comfortably, sipping coffee, and eating a pastry from my public library’s coffee bar. These days book checkout is on the honor system, and nobody is searched.
I still like libraries. I am not a prodigious reader, although I read every day. Libraries are strangely comforting to me even though everyone has access to the facility, library card or not. Libraries are what they are and do what they do. The same is true of people.
My first library from childhood was in an old, mid-19th century, church building and still is. I also like old church architecture. Maybe there is a reason for my library/church juxtaposition of interest. I recall no pervs in the stacks from back then, but if those books could talk… (wait, we have talking books nowadays.)
Computer stations at the Central Branch of the Osterhout Free Library
It seems like it began for this boomer with the assassination of JFK. My first ten years after high school, the sixties, and early seventies, were a coming-of-age time for me and a tumultuous period in American History.
More than fifty years later, I still like to sit in libraries and write, read, search for books, people watch, and sip coffee. I may ponder what others say or claim. I think about how differently we all see the world and each other.
But at this point in my life, I really don’t give a shite what anyone thinks of me, except for Yolonda and our three middle-aged kids; less so, a few teeny-bopper or early 20s grandkids.
So far, I think I pass muster. Sort of.
Bill
Look both ways for what is right. Arguing does little good.
Mind the gaps lest they become crevasses of civil division.
Find your tribe and take a side. Keep trying to understand.
Support public libraries, not book bans or burns.
Click the graphic to fly to Sammi’s blog page to submit and to read other’s prose or poems.
Got My Six
His name was Jay.
We called him Jay Bird
due to his avian-like
looks and behavior.
Callsigns were
seldom complimentary,
like Maverick or Viper.
Jay Bird was my friend.
Look both ways in life but memories are treasures of the mind.
And mind the ever-present gaps as you connect the dots and wonder why.
Mistress Rochelle gave us a double dose of reality today as she announced her recovery from the dreaded COVID CRUD with one of her photos. Nothing can keep her down for long. But the lovely flowers and get-well balloon should inspire us to find the words to tell our own story.
Click on Rochelle’s bouquet for a lift to her page to scope out the rules and regs of the game.
Genre: Military Fiction
Title: Friendly Enemies
Word Count: 100
***
Timo and I were life-long enemies. We always argued and fought. Didn’t know why.
Fatefully, after graduation we ended up in the same platoon. One night on recon walking about ten feet behind the point man, Timo shoved me and whispered, “You’re too close. Spread out!”
Just as I put distance between us, the point man tripped a mine. I remember the flash and loud blast.
I awoke in the hospital to a bouquet of flowers: yellow carnations, white snapdragons, buttercups, purple and violet petunias, and orange lilies.
The card read, “Keep friends close, enemies closer. Get well soon. Timo.”
***
Look both ways for friends and enemies, discernment is key.
Mind the gaps, it may not be what you think.
Click on me or Timo for a bus over to the city or squares and more fun micro-stories.
What would you send your enemy? To know why I used those flowers, click here.
I’ve decided to kick the Monday Rune a week down the road because today is Memorial Day in the USA.
My mother still called it Decoration Day even long after 1971, when Memorial Day was declared a national holiday. If you want some good information and background on the day, click HERE.
On this and every Memorial Day, I hope Americans remember what it’s factually all about. It is a day of memorial, a day to honor and remember people who died in service to the country.
Saying happy Memorial Day is inappropriate, but curbing that gets more difficult every year as more people lose sight of the purpose, which I consider unfortunate, if not sad. While it may never be incorrect to thank a veteran for their service, this day is about the dead, not the living. Veterans Day in on November 11th each year and it is totally correct to say happy Veterans Day, which is also a national holiday.
There are entire vet organizations set up for exactly this purpose: to get it right on Memorial Day. While there is a lot of hoopla, sales, and military prominence on this day, the purpose is still to memorialize the dead. I hope we don’t forget that.
I realize it’s Veterans Day (no apostrophe), but it is not my meme and it gets them message across.
Hurry up! and then wait
might be a cliché to some.
Army’s GI Joes claim it
as their own,
but we’ve all been rushed
and rushed, hurried along,
forced into quick-step like
anthropomorphic white rabbits
through Alice’s wonderland story
(not Arlo’s restaurant one)
and Grace’s slick psyche-song.
Rushed to somewhere
only there to wait,
and wait some more,
and then wait longer.
(‘twas no rarity, either.)
On top of that,
just like the mad hat,
they’d (we) add five minutes,
early
plus five,
and then five more,
(if not ten) minutes early.
A military obsession
greater than want of
any weapon
or crazy-ass war.
Embrace the suck
if it makes it
better how ya feel,
about it all,
been there,
done that,
was not late,
but had to wait.
We’ll all be early
for our own
funerals, unless
it’s Oxford
(not Tulsa) time,
when late is just fine.
Look both ways if you’ve had “some kind of mushroom.”
Mind the gaps and “remember what the dormouse said, feed your head.”
Today’s prompt was to write a concrete poem. I wanted to do all 30 prompts.
What I did instead was intended to be a black out poem in lieu of the prompt, I’ve done concretes before. Not today.
I decided that rather than black out unused text to create the poem, I would extract the lines from the first few paragraphs of a longer story. If I had more time, I might have attempted some art to overlay the blacked-out area.
If I included the entire narrative, it would have been too long with entire paragraphs blacked out. So, I extracted the parts/words/sections that made up the poem.
one story I’ve never told,
it would only cause embarrassment,
a confession…
makes me squirm,
I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame,
it’s a hard story to tell.
if evil were evil enough, if good were good enough
I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage…
Courage, comes in finite quantities,
it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward.
I was drafted to fight a war I hated.
(You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.)
…I assumed that the problems of killing and dying did not fall within my special province…
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968.
I was too good for this war.
Too smart, too compassionate, too everything.
I was above it. A mistake, maybe…I was no soldier.
Look both ways for reasons why and why not.
Mind the gaps. That’s where the booby traps hide.
Our Literary Journey 