Bird

There’s a bird in my heart, yeah, but not crushed and stinking like yrs old man. Not cold, not hidden, not dark, colored feathers, unstained with bitter wine and tobacco spit, not touched with the spectre of nicotine stain. Yeah, I’m getting older, not harder, not whoring a heart of gold either, I’m trying to be more. There’s a bird in my heart, you broken hearted, whom you can’t see, a big bird who hunts and kills and hurts and heals me. I could never be like you, I learned that when I read you. I learned that when I asked for a little respect from you. I have been the grown up at the party, herding your wild children, hiding us from the police. I never wanted to hurt anyone, never wanted to fear everything, I only wanted increase. All the young girls I seduced, in to and out of their beds while Mommy and Daddy slept, poured booze into, stuck needles into and blew smoke into, loved, lied, tried to look cool to (and girls, I loved all of you), you all fed the bird in my heart, and how could you know when it would turn on me, how could you have helped when it tore me apart, when it needed to take a part of me? The bird in my heart is no tender part of me, it’s animal, yes, beautiful, but savage and foreign to me, probably the thing that will kill me. I let it go; I am not jealous if it deserts me. Love, loss, prose and poems, I take what it gives me, wait, is it even in me? There is a bird in my heart that doesn’t countenance any of us very much. Sometimes I look at him, yes, but I never touch. 

Maintenance of Way

1.

My daddy was a Railroad Man the Atchison-Topeka & the Santa-Fe. God placed a Railroad from the Garden throughout the World and Wilderness and my daddy like Adam maintained his section of accursed track. Track-Supervisor later Road-Master. The Master of Roads my daddy took to the shiny or rusty or hot or cold rigid road and ran it right and tried to come home. Most times when my daddy came home, we ran into his arms he came home to hug his boy and his girls and his wife and eat his dinner and watch the Rockford Files or M*A*S*H* and be the loving man in the easy chair or the driveway wrenching on his car or the front seat driving us to Church or out to dinner or to Grandma and Grandpa’s on the then-narrow way. I know we straightened him my daddy my Dad My Father! We straightened you! We straitened you! Did the road the strait & narrow keep you? Did the violence poverty ignorance sadness and despair tempt you toward the World? Did Oklahoma Arkansas San Diego Tijuana Los Angeles San Bernardino Corona Palm Springs Needles Barstow Twenty-Nine Palms Kingman seem out of the way from the straitening of the road you needed? Did the Navy with its Annapolis Norfolk D.C. Baltimore New York The Presidio in San Francisco and Viet-Nam tear you off your narrow road in an Age when it was ok not to need any more than to grow up and have a family and be more and also be less than your father before you? The Old man also a Railroad Man also a Navy Man but how I saw you react with shame to know of the womanizer home wrecker one in every port any port in the storm Grandpa the Old Man Old Railroad Man Oldass Man trying to strongarm me when I was young. Trying to touch my mother’s tits long after my parents had divorced “and I’ll take care of the boy honey straighten it out just honey you let me worry about that boy.” Making passes at my mom dirty Old Man made dirtier still by Daddy’s conversion to Mormonism to straiten again your Onanism Old Man. Bless and curse not. Bless and curse not Bless and curse not. Bless and curse not. Bless and curse not. Bless and curse not.

2.

The Road goes ever on. The department my daddy worked in was called The Maintenance of Way we maintain our way we maintain our way we get to what we all want to get to and we maintain it we restrain it we enforce and support and excavate and shim and plane it. We instruct and counsel it we preach and teach and Parent and Pastor and Principal and Coach and Leadership Workshop Encounter Group Sunday School Psychologist Youth Pastor and Scout Master it and never do understand why a young man would fail to try to gain it. In short, we Master it. Maintenance of the Way the way we live the way we talk the way we worship the way we believe the way we work the way we play the way we get through the day the way you could be Left Behind if you stay too long the way we make amends years later and you are obligated to forgive or simply go away. Is this the Way? So much Instruction Lecturing and Interdiction Indoctrination and Coercion Consequence and Revision Constancy and Conversion Backsliding into Oblivion Ultimatums and Rebellion Sin and Remission. How could it fail to Alienate One? How could it Fail to be your very own Son?

3.

Stay in the Way. Way in the World Way in the Wilderness Way in the Jungle Heart of heathenness yellow tigers crouched in jungles in who’s eyes in Charlie’s eyes in caves and holes and tunnels to assault the Way. No escape from the world to let you know you are in the way. Unofficial Insurgency Police Action against Insensate Evil Instruct Authority Secrecy No Road No Trace you must not see his face. The Enemy can never know what we are doing in this place. Agent Orange Ancient Enemy National Napalm tragedy nevermind the VC the NVA the ARVN VietMinh Burn the Village Rape Pillage! The road leads through the Village leads to Atrocity Empire Puppet War a strike at the heart of (really) Chinese Dominoes!

Suddenly, you come home.

There was a Temple built around you, and people pray without you buy and sell trust or doubt you Credit and Clout you. Your job has been saved for you. Get married and buy a home. Have more children so they’ll never play alone. Marriage Children Churches and Schools forget about all of the violence you can focus on following the rules. Deviation is for fools. Nevermind they spit on you babykiller who were you bringing freedom to over there or were you just an invading force? Is Charlie watching from the shadows and noting the beginning of your latest divorce? Noting little acts of violence wife and children to keep the family going in the evening TV glowing you’ll make amends tomorrow the stress is showing. Did Ho–Chi-Minh come home with you without you knowing? “Goodnight Charlie, Goodnight America, Sweet Dreams, Goodnight John-Boy.”

4.

Railroad nails and spikes fit to build the Second Coming or the Crucifixion as everybody likes. Creosote and tar and the Sin of the Father rubbing off on the Son held down with ties rocks and pikes lain in the Garden and run through the land of Nod. That home which no one ever goes back to cold and cursed one back in that desert both a world away and never far. That land whose accent you speak especially when you lie when you sin again when you need to know once again who you really are. Rail nights and days lines of track keeping track of you running away and you sleep under a bridge but you weren’t ready and you got thirsty hot and hungry and the Railroad threw you back. You drag yourself home then to the clean white sheets of home the clean white death of giving in the clean white sheet of dying in your small town while the road hums and gleams tempts you to polish your scales of worthiness ballasted with moonlight. There is another clean white sheet you learn as big as the moon and the Crucifixion can’t touch you and your wounds can heal in the open air and for the first time joyfully it is said:

“Where I am going you cannot follow.”

In the Beginning God created a Train just outside the Garden and the Garden wasn’t all it was cracked up to be after all and the Train went by at night and it lulled the faithful to sleep. The sleep of Reason. The sleep of a Demon. You don’t need to follow the track. Step into the World.