This gift of love, compassion
For UNISEX, By-sex, Hetero sex, And United Nations
Children’s Fund, the child who does know–
Would walk a mile, yet, to like Uncle Bud’s house,
Aunt Noreen, all the kids, Jean and Susan, milk goats,
Horses, Bud with bread went to work with truck,
To make millions, his children coming to Roscoe
Bud Bower, outspoken like killing a buck with his gun,
Together, to receive the gold this from father, mother,
When heat attack, stroke, broke old Bud, Noreen,
He would hockey his throat, both my father, Bud,
Play with 30:30 deer rifles, all guns so powerful
With scopes, drive nails into houses, lingering bulldozer
Nowhere fire in pines; nothing my dad left brother,
Me from his millions, a car, a truck, both all old stuff
Could never drive from Pacific Sierra, to Midwest
Cities, but Bud would say, “It’s your dad’s, but
He loves you Chuck; we both would never say
It but when dead.” We watched to yet see in eyes he
Grew old, Bud who would not take his Heart med
Died in late 70s, would not believe, like a buck
Stalking for rut, females, my dad and Bud, Men
Ever men’s men, Bud would have lived who knows,
I take every med, in fields with my lovely cameras
Flowers, butterflies, bugs, Pink Ladies, Monarchs,
Cabbage Moths–I am not a man’s man. Like poems,
Bud, did believe in a Jesus, so I have I fallen
On my titanium knees–oh, his son Jean took all,
Egged me on to fight when I was five, that kid
At Miramonty Indigenous Chief School kindergarten,
Mother, Dougie, and me, dad abandoned us,
My mother, Bud would say to my dad about mom,
“Don’t lie about your x-wife, you severed clean
Divorced in the night.” They never talked again
Not about trucks, or driving nails, or deer rifles.
Dad found a kind of God, so in his wife to him
As he asked about women, he had found his God
“It’s alright, you and Bud finally friends again, Dad
Understand,” Then Bud died scrapping across his floor,
Man’s man, I thought about my books, was not man’s man,
I had written, yet another book, my dad renounced
Everything but his church, yet took communion with me
Left me his care, his heaviness, his belief in horror.
At the end, I was the broken one , thinking back to Bud,
Bud who believed one pulled self up by hunting boots
Straps across working boots, kicked Mexicans out
As my dad, those Darkies, Chinks, any man of color
My daughter who yet believed, became disillusioned.
Bud in background, ever saying, “Len are you honest?”
Sioux Falls, Authors Photo, C Charles Taylor
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Published by elgwyn
I was a University and college writing teacher, now retired, so I write poetry, and essays, mostly free verse poetry. I love writing. Computers, tablets, and smart phones are the norm. When one sees university campuses with students looking at phones while walking to class, one realizes writing can be blogging. I am an ordinary man writing for artistic pleasure writing, and simple taste-- blogs are an answer to high priced self-publishing. Walt Whitman had to print his paper books himself, because in 1855, and 1860 poetry did not sell. It does not sell now unless you have a Pulitzer Prize and even then the poet usually makes a living in other ways than writing. In all ages there have been writers writing out of their own needs, and blogs are an answer to get rid of high cost of self creativity. I am an older man with fewer computer skills than my daughter who has been at computers since she was three, so here I can satisfy my need to write without spending too much on self-published books. All three blogs let me reach an audience missed by books and stand a better chance to reach a wider audience. My two books, Winter from Spring, Meditations on Gratitude, as Kindle books and paperbacks did not reach as many people as I wanted, and blogs can let me avoid the printer. Layout and design is expensive. For me writing is more like the charcoal jottings of preexisting civilization made only for posterity. Blogs face two problems as I see it. They might be submerged into a chaos of too much writing, and they depend on electronic storage. Yet, how's that different from electronic books which must have specialized publication? Paper disintegrates, blogs can be physically stored and organized for posterity in data banks. All organization becomes chaos at some point, but charcoal images on cave walls still exist after the author scribbled eons ago. So what if I reach only a few interested people, but hopefully, readers will reach out to me. Writing is essential for showing the ways of culture before history knows those ways. To record each individual is essential especial for billions of people who need to know enough reading beyond pictures to save a planet. Writing without profit isn't new to me. I'm not seeking to impress the audience. Poetry in general never sells, and personal confessional, and emotional writing exists sometimes like journal writings only for the author. At least here is my hope for wider audiences. My writing is personal and informal, but my writing expresses some serious ideas like the writing of contemporary writers to rise above chaos in my own simple way, above self-absorption, a meditation, the simple writing of an ordinary man. I hope to find my own way out of my own chaos and make my record stand alone if even in electrons. Though I hope never to express nightmare in my poetry, fiction, or essays, some serious considerations are important to me after centuries of mechanized nightmare. The next decade is probably of the same failure in our world. This decade looks to be another time of diminished individuals and the next as well. We all wish peace and hope will become normal. It looks like if hope reaches each individual, not governments there is satisfaction in making means of writing available to many. My hope is for each human being to give their own expression out of the abyss. If humankind is to survive in any common way, we must each be able to express maturity and take responsibility in something beyond self. Electronic media offers people these possibilities so long as computers can store individual lives. Here people can freely see what I write and what others write. Though I hold an MFA in creative writing my simple vision never found a wide audience. I was disappointed about this earlier in my life, but now it's just what one expects of such degrees. I found happiness in family and especially in love of my wife and daughter. Writing can be more than a pastime now that I'm older. I approach seven decades living with some disappointing times, and some satisfying times. I'm like most people, and I've been married more than 37 years, and we sent a successful daughter into the world. We happily live in a country where even the poorest have food. Often as a young man when I traveled for nearly one year through Europe, where does a culture begin to feed and house so many people, and how do all these people live in harmony since World War II? Maybe it's been a question of survival. Writers can hold a little corner with blogging, blogging for harmony and peace. This is my hope. This is my question.
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