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?”
