I live in a world declared dead in a photograph taken in 1965
Where dreams and drums and a road-mapped knapsack
Combine in the poetry and music of
Being alive.

Why do the conspiratorial giggles
Of teenage girls at the bookstore
Make me long for machine gun fire
And strong black tea?

*written New Year's Eve 1999, Taos, NM

"you're sick of hangin' around, and you wanna travel,
get tired of travellin', you wanna settle down..."-Greatful Dead

If journalism is to literature
What prostitution is to making love,
Then you were God's Own Whore!
I'll never fail to think of you
When I'm hauling ass
East out of Barstow

Yesterday I sat in the Veterans Assistance Office
On the TV it was live...
In green night-vision tones
The Marine Corps launched a new offensive
On the city of Fallujah

I was there the night they say that
Bobby Dylan killed the music
I was there the day they nailed up
Sweet Jesus to the cross
I was there that Sunday morning when
Pearl Harbor turned to flame

About Tea:

Black or Grey and best when Green
In Texas, they'll tell you that all tea is Brown

A lot of things are brown in Texas
...the color of bullshit, and sun-dried lawns

Every night is edited with the random punctuation
of exploding mortar rounds
And it takes a while to learn to sleep
And realize...
You'll never hear the one that gets you.

It was the day I didn't make it to the big
demonstration in The City
It was the day I read a poem about the war
at the Berkeley Poetry Festival

On a clear day
you can see the Golden Gate from here
On a clear day

On a clear day
On a clear day, I wouldn't be here
What's a clear day anyway?

I want to climb those orange towers,

We all can reach that point
When we are pushed
When we are guided
When we have to...

When we have to,
we can surprise even ourselves.

Faith - the faith you counted on to keep you strong

French Market coffee stand
Beignets and hot, strong chickory coffee
Waiters in white shirts and bowties
Tourists, Locals, Drunks, and Hangers-on
Brass band on the street outside

How old were you in 1992?
I was 18, and I was not an infantryman
Yet at Christmas time I flew to war
On comet, on cupid, on Donner, and Blitzen
...And into Mogadishu on a Hercules

PTSD
Put This Shit Down
Put it down on paper
Read it aloud
Let it see the light of day
Show those that weren't there
What was there
What is there

The truth is horrible

"Engage the Target!"
The Captain shouts at me,
Static in my ear piece
It is 0840.
We have come to a stop.
The lead vehicle providing security for a fuel convoy
Hot, bright sun
Hot body armor