Like What My Father Said

I stir the news,
trying to mix the creamy fluff
with all these dark brewings;
an attempt to blend
something closer to the truth
than what I am drinking in.

"Amnesty International,
and Peace", like picket signs,
are printed boldly on my mug,
from a time when I thought
I was feeding more
than the hungry corporate mouth.

I grew up in a war-zone,
a battering down of whatever fort
I could erect for self protection.
Bombs burst in, exploding with
"You are a piece of garbage, worthless!
No one cares whether you live or die!"

They were right.
I watched every night
as my Army invaded
burning huts to save
little Vietnamese children.
No one ever came to save me.

But that is the American Way.
We don't ask for much help
with our grocery bill, while feeding
the starving in search
of a quiet Sunday dinner.

My Da missed the mark
only once in his life,
or so it seemed to me.
He knew how to break the locks
of Russian gulags, before Stalin's
Children learned the words to scream -

their orphanage was a POW camp too,
and Joseph did very bad things
to the weakest as well. But it took years
for Da to rescue his own,
as we cried,
"Where is our cavalry ?"

I realized John Wayne
was just a movie star,
hacking my way back
through jungles of bureaucracy,
and Da was just a man
who always tried to keep a clear path.

At night we would swap war stories,
and brace the bunker against
the incoming of old wounds,
telling each other, "It's okay.
You are safe now. You are
Home…"

We watched the t.v. together,
changing the channels
of the past, as we laughed
at old newshounds, who still reported
they were cool. Because
they didn't laugh at the hippies

passing out Peace, wrapped
in plastic baggies,
and zippity do da paper,
while the rest of the world
was trying to get high
on simply being alive,

only to go up in smoke.
My Pop never found
hippies that funny, with their Mao Tse Tung,
and Ho Chi Min posters,
in day-glo colors, hung
like icons in a Cathedral.

"I wonder if they know
how many babies those two bastards
have murdered? Babies
I have fed, when their countrymen
were no where to be found."
That morsel was a lot to chew on.

Watching half-trained stallions
hoofing it, making a mess
with their prancing in private stalls,
I chanced the idea that there might be
a truly greener pasture
to retire all these show-ponies in.

Da admired my constant plowing,
this need to keep digging.
"Nothing grows in shallow soil Girl."
I asked my questions, finding fault
on both sides of the fence.
My father made his wisest decision thus far.

He sent me to my Grannie.
"Women always pay better attention.",
he laughed as my grandmother snorted
at my silly puzzle, already shelved
in her house. Because she had lived
long enough to piece it together.

"Imagine you woke tomorrow, reborn,
and everything in this world was good
from that moment on. How
would you know the wonder of it ?
How would you feel if a perfect life
was just another day ?"

Da sat next to me, smiling.
"For ever enemy I killed, I prayed
in that person's temple for forgiveness.
God heard every word.
For every man, woman, and child,
who's life I ended, I saved another.

Life tips with strange leanings Child.
There will always be those,
on the dark side of this Universe,
who scream someone has jumped
too much, or too hard.
We never seem…

To want to give God his due.
Like disgruntled losers, no one
wants to give credit
to the training given freely,
so we might reach the finish line.
But hey I am just an old war-horse.
What do I know ?"

I stir the news,
trying to mix the creamy fluff
with these dark brewings;
to find balance, something closer to the truth
than what I am drinking in.

Something like what my father said …