rolling thunder

[byronius]

foggy on the carrier
smilin’ in sunglasses
off they go.
run others run
mccarthy made us do it
i’ll have a gin and tonic.
what’s a few dead cows?
burning monkeys
send in the boys.
steak and a baked potato, please
maybe bamboo submarines?
goddamn hippies.
it’s the communal virus
sapping our precious fluids
whiskey sours on the foredeck
to watch the napalm sunset.

[cali]

1. I like it.

don't know what to say beyond that it's lyrical and evocative.

[byronius]

2. I like your stuff back. Especially your last one.

I'm reading Barbara Tuchman's 'March Of Folly', the last section on the Vietnam war. McNamara's smiling face as he watches the carrier jets departing was just so iconically stupid, I was driven to satirize it.

Messy, messy times. Kinda like these.

[cali]

3. thanks. I really like that the reference was clear

it might not seem it, but that last poem is pretty literal. I have a friend who is a dancer. He travels a lot. I shattered my leg and had to learn to walk again- starting in a pool with a platform floor that could be raised and lowered. I like how the most mundane things can be transformed in poem form.

[byronius]

4. Awesome. Your explanation makes it better.

WTF a shattered leg? And what does the other guy look like? The pool translates perfectly.

Successful algorithmic word cast, man :: snap:: snap::

Except now my brain thinks it knows what you look like. But that means job well done, right?

Is it possible that we fill in images by dipping into some sort of communal consciousness well?

No way, some say. Black and white. Nothing Doing Here. Move along, pedestrian.

[cali]

5. yes, shattered. what's called a displaced segmental spiral fracture

and I had more than one. I was alone. My phone was upstairs. I'd fallen down almost an entire flight of stairs, and attempting to keep my balance, I landed with my left leg twisted, on a concrete block floor, with my full weight. It's funny; I've never though about this correlation before: My friend has spent much of his professional life working/thinking/dancing about falling. One of his early pieces is called 'fall after Newton'. I did think about how another big piece of his work has been around pedestrian stuff- literally. Another early piece is called 'satisfying lover' and it's centered around walking. As for what I look like, I've tried to post a pic in my profile, but can't manage it. If you want, pm me and I'll give you my real name- you can look me up on fb- where I am very much an open book. I just joined end of April. Trust me to wait until something is on the wane.

Yes, yes. It is likely that we tap into communal consciousness to construct images- among other things. Back to my post-Newton fall: I had to crawl on my stomach out the front door, up the dirt driveway and then up the dirt road to get help. It wasn't that far, but it was quite a journey. Fortunately, my neighbor was home. It was night; September (thankfully not winter). It took the ambulance over half an hour to get to me. At the hospital they IV morhined me out. The next morning I had hours of surgery and a titanium rod was placed in the channel of my tibia and the fibula was set. That was the first of 3 surgeries I had over the next nine months. Eventually a plate was attached to my fibula and the rod was switched out for a larger bore one. I had massive soft tissue damage and I developed something called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, aka Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. It's why I'm typing away here at 1:30 in the morning. When pain wakes you, best get up and do something.

As for what my friend looks like, he's very thin with a sort of... renaissance face and very bright almost burning blue eyes, elegant, economy of movement. The piece I refer to in the poem he does blindfolded to Glenn Gould's version of the Goldberg Variations.

[byronius]

6. That sounds quite consciousness-altering.

I was at the gym last night and walked around in the pool trying to imagine what that kind of physical therapy would feel like.

And I failed. It felt like I was walking around in a pool. I've never experienced that kind of enormous physical impact, just a string of smaller ones.

[theexwife]

7. Mmmmm

Gin and Tonic....