Making Do

Making stuff, things, masterpieces, war, do, why is that superior to consuming make-products.

Consuming do is a knack taught in military training, obedience in the heat and horror of battle, you, go there, kill that -- you think, me, is she talking to me, do I really love that she whose tongue at its best pours honey on wounds, kills my hatred, births my little boy, me my little teen learning the pleasure of self-fucking, coming into knowledge that my ugly puss, festering skin, blurred vision, tongue stutter, poor boy, not even dignified with Mex and Nig, was not going to win over the girls of my dreams, a mother couldn't love it, busy was she coping with men of gigantic demands, dump the kid, Bea, or I'm gone on a long, long trip, he said to momma, I heard momma rollover to look at me on the pallet to see if I was awake to hear my death sentence, I was, eyes squeezed, lips pursed, tongue frozen, heart smashed, I peed myself in terror, I peed myself in Korea when Bea's Big Man said go there kill those, I peed myself when I shot a yellow man staring up at me in terror, tears and spit flowing from his face, tongue protruding in silence, matching mine, he peed with me, I shot, I shot the ground by his head, I shot the ground again by his head, I shot at nothing in the distance, I saw him roll away, crawl away, limp away, I shot the other way until out of ammo, then, and then I saw the yellow man collapsing, saw a Big Man coming toward him firing, saw the Big Man missing his target, saw the yellow man raising his rifle, firing, hitting, bursting the front of the Big Man, what am I seeing I think I thought, is that my father dying, my brother shotgunning my father, in rage, in horror at my daddy beating my momma, screaming don't daddy, don't do that daddy, he yelled, firing both barrels, my daddy coming apart, mid-section chopped guts, torso divorced from groundstanders. Bea looked at my brother like he was her young-wed husband, with adoration and dread.

I could not leave my momma after that killing, slept next to her bed on a pallet, year after year of her trying to find a new husband, none able to bear the silent kid on the floor who would not talk.

Hands

OB sober looked ghost-stricken in buglight. Hello son he waved his hat at my stern warnoff through the screen door.

He sat on the motel bed, lit a Camel as if in wind. That flicker, those cracked hands cupped, the light up smell, and I couldn't stand, had to crouch, a boy in wonder at a flyaway story of a woman and a man, Bea and OB.

They'd split up when I was 5 about, just when was never clear, we kids shifted to relatives, staying with one then another, separated, not sure what was happening.

Bea cried the blues, took in laundry and drank. OB labored, was injured often and drank. I saw them together about once a year in four decades, they kept their distance at those times but had a way of joking with each other that never waned.

OB! Bea would laugh at his comedies of hardship and lost hope overcome, and OB turned pink with her special appreciation of his gift for making the best of what was worst.

When the two drank it was in the same manner they'd learned as young lovers escaping home and parents where drink was forbidden. They turned away to sip, ducked to wipe their lips, take a smoke, held the bottles and cigarettes at their sides not really out of sight.

That is what they did when they were in a room together, until one passed away and the other wept and wailed like a heartbreak movie, OB laughed, coughed at himself for being so broke.

Son, I could sure use a few dollars, he pled, and passed his Camel cupped over to Bea.

Day Two

The scout coven meeting got raided by a tarzan, tarpapers united for the purpose of trim-fat, and as that transpired, who peered, who else, the master nickle tapper, spoon beating edge of a fiver, ouch.

Headaches. Indistinguishable on a scale of one to from a swift kick upstairs to rid lovey dovey of a burr under.

Solidifying morale takes more than portland, it takes to water as if gilled.

A speck of sand, in a whirring u-joint, is no less than the loss of a nail in olden time warbanging.

Eternity was once measured by the tip of an eagle's wing removing one grain of sand from all the world's beaches each circumnavigation. The one inside your contact wow does that blur a pure poem catching the horizon just so, just softly your lover's tongue lifts the edge of your eye lens, frog licks the silicon, pleasure thrill ride, oops, barring the vinegar of the salad bar left unswished, wow does that ask for your money back, honey I wish you hadn't.

Day two of a vacation, honeymoon redux, and hell couldn't be worse. Easy, jack, it's not over.

Sob

Odds are this is not the place it once was and there'll be hard looks, no looks, loot at that would yous, for heavens sake are there no decencies.

Nor am I same as before, couldn't take it, and the way that it just when you barely got used to it, became three shit meals a day, and wages dropping, then stopping: counselled: take a few days off, wait by the phone we'll call you, back patted at the last time clock, the greaser saying don't be mad at me, I'm next, save me a seat.

Steady drinking all day long put me in touch with my inner anger.

Standing in line for a turkey.

Studying snapshots of army days, retired by now if I'd stuck it out. Or dead, or in VA aching stumps and plastic organs.

Went up to Bronx VA to lift my spirts, wander around the dayrooms looking for my life-style alternatives. More women there now. Met a young woman who'd lost body parts during the USS Cole bombing. She wasn't smiling and bouncebacky from her stumpdom. Half an arm gone and half a leg, opposite sides. Side of her face made me cry when she turned to say nice to meet you, a mess isn't it.

There were medals and get wells pinned above her pillow, a picture of her in dress blues on the bedside surrounded by family, in the corner two of them reading bible, mom and bro.

Who are you, she asked, why are you here, are you here to help me get over this, this ... terrible tragedy.

Yes, I sobbed, will do that for me.

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