Bumbling on Egg Shells

Dear You . . .

I sat at this keyboard for an hour
and couldn't make a word

Right up until the second
LaShawna handed me the laptop
I was swearing to be cool
and act like your last e-mail
(the 'dial back
on the psuedo romance' e-mail)
didn't affect me at all

it's been weird trying to pre-censor
what I'm going to write

walking on mental egg shells for 24 hours

But

--- look at me! ---

I'm just going to recklessly blurt

that your letter made me really sad
and that I'm
I'm

embarrassed and sorry

You need to save your energy
for your battles at work, I know

and that I hate having to do this in writing

and that I'll bet we could/can work something out

and that I still like you

There.

That probably really messed things up

*sad smile*


Fun at the Faire

As we rode today

some vineyard workers told us
that there was a Fair today
a few villages down the pike

"Oh Goody" we sez to ourzelvze

thinking of the Jolly Faires of Burgundy

When we got to this "fair"
we hardly recognized it as such

Twelve-odd suspicious scammers
crouched in their carts
(like foxholes)
and waited
(like drug-dealers)
for wary locals to peek at
their stolen "bads"

mostly armor and military regalia . . .
. . . often still bloody

A guy hung on to my stirrup
and tried to sell me his wife
or, if the upkeep daunted me,
to rent her

The only shred of liveliness
was a shrieking circle
of all ages

playing blanket toss
with a limp youngster
wearing red rouge cheek circles

who turned out
upon closer examination
to be dead


Demographic Neutron Bomb

Twenty years ago
the Black Death
went through this area
between Milan and Florence
like a toothed scythe

slicing and sparing randomly

The twenty-somethings
who now run things around here
are a damaged generation

hard-bit, impulsive, pleasure-craving,
numbed, terrified, careless

. . . e.g. the huge human dogfight cockfight fistfight
at the "fair" over
some accidentally-bent long shoe-toe
(the sick soft real sound of punches
not the crisp Hollywood sound)

_Post-Traumatic Stress
_Survivor Guilt
_Unprocessed Grief
_Inability to Trust

These kids lived through
the biblical End Times
and no longer know what Time this is

These people sold the White Company
poisoned wheat
just for the fuck of it, apparently


What Do June Showers Bring?

Allergies?

Few things are less comfortable
than steel gloves
with the fingertips full of water


In the News . . .

I'm trying to figure out what to talk about.

I miss talking about you and me.

Your description of the Bush White House's
bald-faced global-warming ostrich-behavior
makes me realize
that it takes two mistakes
to make a Quixote

1) You believe you are a knight
(the role-playing fallacy)

2) You believe that this is the Age of Knights
(the historical fallacy)

The two mistakes are co-dependent

Bush II is trying to impose an historical fiction
through policy

He is rolling back the clock
acting as though it is an earlier era
--- an era of abundant resources and
little pollution ---

so that he and his friends
can act out their role fantasy of being
the Successful Americans
they grew up reading about


*long pause*


I'm acting out my fantasy
of being the witty observer
who never gets involved/implicated
whose cynicism keeps his hands clean

. . . which doesn't work


I swatted
the grabby wife-seller at the faire
with my hammer
(just to get his hand off my leg!)
I was annoyed
I think I broke his jaw

We're all Quixotes


Skip is Nervous

Four guys on horses
are following our combined
White-Blue Company Caravan
about 3/4 mile back

Skip looks back at them obsessively

He always shares stuff with me
but he won't talk about this

I don't like it


A Guy At the Faire
Was Selling This


It's a bronze Roman prisoner
about 4" high

Fucking Romans!


Viking is a Verb

Bighearted Benjamin
was the one who first figured out
the dolled-up kid
in the blanket toss was dead

And he flipped into the ozone

He started yelling stuff about his own son
and what a crappy father he is
to abandon him for a year
just like his own dad did

Regine and Julio had to restrain him

We were by an abandoned farm

Regine and I put our heads together,
decided to hand him back his axe
and point him toward the ruined barn
and say "Get us some firewood please."


For twenty minutes he 'viked' the place

hacking and screaming

berserk

real war yells

(once you've heard a real war yell
like we heard in Burgundy
it becomes part of your vocabulary)

He viked the place good

And then he cried his guts out

And everybody took leaks
and we hit the trail again


Good Plan

I think it's a great idea for you
to go over the heads of your local management
and go straight to the top brass in San Fran

They're treating you like crap

Go for it


Good Night

. . . to a Bad Day (at least here it was)
Hope yours was better

No tents tonight
No time
Just wet grass

Bighearted Benjamin gets the laptop next
poor guy


Your Faithful Correspondent

Berto the Damned Hammer Alto