Category: Poems

When great men die the birds cry and sing songs of sorrow,

rain falls, thunder rumbles.

The house is empty; it cries out for its master.

It always waits to no avail.

Every tomorrow that passes by, we drift away from what was a happy

home.

Where a father and son spoke in the dead of night on leather

sofas.

“Come put these shoes together.”

“This is how you shine them.”

“The sheets, you tuck’em in, in an angle.”

“Fold and iron your clothes and always be neat.”

“If you’re going to do something, you do it right or not at all.”

I carry your lessons in my weakened heart that still beats evermore

faintly.

It gave me trouble last night, and in anger and frustration I lost my fear of the

Big Sleep.

Of going away without any Glory, for all I’ve known since

you’ve been gone is loss.

Loss after loss, failure after failure.

And in the throes of defeat, I’ve come to accept that

it is my lot in life.

Though I crave to bring you Victory, I now welcome

defeat so it hurts me no more.

Today my heart felt stronger.

It rose like I saw you rise from those hospital beds.

Rising from near death again and again.

For such a man these birds cry and sing to your

Honor.

I’m glad you visited me in the realm of dreams last

night at the movies, sitting across from me as that

strange picture played.

If my heart beats tomorrow, I will keep punching back at life,

and if it does not, then at Eternity’s gates we shall share our

stories.

Walking the streets, looking for an area of operation.

We went South, then a day later we went West.

Both places seem good, seem manageable, but I think

we agreed the South would be the better option.

Either one is fine, we concluded. The AOs are close enough to one another.

 

In the round table we sat one morning. We sat to discuss the formation of an

organization. One with noble principles, and a quasi-military structure.

We knew that it could not last; even the Roman empire fell at some point.

But we spoke of such things, of spreading knowledge, of setting an example

we no longer see, but that lives in us– passed down to us by our forefathers.

 

Values that keep our society together; the lack of which tears apart its foundations.

But how could we change such a large space, we thought. Why not then set a more

realistic goal. One of forming a new society –one that thrives amongst the larger society in secrecy.

Hidden in plain sight. These things we spoke of: Marcus Aurelius, Bushido, Chivalry, La Cosa Nostra.

These things we spoke of and meant it. An organization and a society, to do what others cannot.

 

These things we spoke of, my brother and I.

Sometimes I myself feel like a vet suffering  through the pains of PTSD.

Sometime I sit in bed like Captain Willard re-experiencing the horrors I saw or the horrors I committed.

Like him, I’m waiting for a mission.

A clear objective:

terminate the Colonel with extreme prejudice.

A mission meant for me, for my skills, my knowledge.

A way out.

A way forward.

To be fully immersed in life and purpose; a high like no other, while waiting for

The End.

I saw a man who looked just like Bukowski.

He sat in an old Kia Sportage wearing a

blue shirt, waiting for his wife

to come out of the grocery

store.

I looked his way twice and smiled, baffled at the resemblance with

the fellow poet.

Just the previous night, I faintly remember I saw him in a dream, for one of his books sits on my armoire. Perhaps my dreams are now taking physical form, manifesting in conscious reality.

In my dreams, I saw who I thought was my father, sitting on the baseball stands, as I called him on a cellphone. An unknown sympathetic man picked up. I apologized, but the man did not mind and he was kind. The man sitting was not my father. He was someone else, an illusion, a message from the unconscious.

I spend a lot of time now studying things my teachers failed to teach me or I failed to learn. And running through the mountain roads I call home, envisioning my future friends and I embracing the difficulties and pain of life through training.

I now train and study to become like the Hurricane, a warrior and a scholar — to earn my picture on the wall of heroes that wait for me.

The world breaks once more, in war it destabilizes, and I just happen to be alive in this moment in history, hoping to do something worthy of some remembrance before I walk amongst my fathers “in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.”