The F#@K Stops Here! (Death of a Folk Hero.)

Harry Randall Truman became a folk hero after he refused to leave his home prior to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.  Click here to see an interview Harry gave: click here

Harry Truman's in his cave

Said that he'd be no man's slave...

Goddamn government...MOVE!...That's all they know to say...that and PAY!...Boy, she's shakin' this mornin'...Need a drink...I got that...I got plenty o' that.

Harry said good-bye one day

Turned his back and walked away...

Don't need them...Move, Hell!...Don't need them...don't need nobody!...just her...me...and her. Oooh!...I felt that. Just mad...that's all...She's mad as hell...'bout what they done to this place. Little box houses...boxes...box houses...all over like pimples!...She'll pop 'em! Mad, mad 'bout makin' her a garbage dump. Dumpin' garbage...on her...in her...over her...under her. You got garbage? That's right. Dump it. Bury it...bury her.... That's right...can't go nowhere...nowhere to go...fine...fine. Nowhere to go. Fine!

He and bourbon...they were friends...
Saw no hope for man's a-mends.

Harry sat on the edge of the bed he'd carved from the soft stuff of Helen's womb. He had to pee. With what he drank, he usually had to pee. Harry stood up and stumbled to the far corner of his cave. There...long ago...he'd found a cleft in the rock floor which welcomed his recycled Kentucky Bourbon. He peed, holding himself up with one hand on her endometrium and stared at the centerfold pasted on the wall. She shivered.

Harry was a horny groom...
Loved his wife...the crack of doom.

Huh...mmmmm...oh February...my February...oh...shakin'...shakin'...she...yes, yes, what the...in the corner??...oh...shakin'...red hot...Goddamn hot!

I like to think Harry somehow survived, but it is assumed that Harry, Miss February, sixteen cases of Old Kentucky Bourbon, and his cooler of food...all disappeared when the mountain blew. Ohhh...the wrath of a woman scorned. 

That's all folks!      

  

Nostalgia...

J

The wind again blows snow

Through limbs of tired wood

Aching to burst its life upon us;

And blades of green reach out

Expecting golden sun

To find cold white pieces of winter

Still falling from an obviously sentimental sky. 

Terror....

Terror first climbs from beneath a bed
And from the shadows...of the dead?
As our journey makes its way
It moves from darkness...into day.

A short walk to an uncle's viewing,
The aunt's tears and her despair.
Grief repeats with no reprieve
And somehow it turns normal.

"Terror is as terror does,"
A Forrest once might say.
Let it in and it becomes,
I will turn away.

"ISIS is as ISIS does,"
Terror is their game.
And each day it's death we see
More Horrors in their name.

Then one fine day...bright and serene,
Like 9/11/2001,
You stop to smell some coffee...
And then you smell no more......

Beached....

There was urine in the air. Jonathon abandoned the cracks in the ceiling, rolling his head to the left. The plastic covered pillow complained within its starched cotton case. He could see a swollen yellow sack dangling from the chrome maze enclosing the next bed. Muffled snoring blended with the smell of urine, iodine, and medicine into the dissipating light; and the hum from air conditioning vents seemed to orchestrate the other elements.

Jonathon Wilder sat up in bed – slowly – to minimize the throbbing. The pains had more or less settled in like a new tenant during the last few months. Now, just a part of him. He’d be leaving soon…for where? A Corpsman’s white shirt glowed from the single bulb in a desk lamp. But the light – the nurse’s station – seemed enclosed in shadows that coagulated into a thick mass, pressing against the windows in far corners of the ward. Jonathon threw back his sheet and dropped his legs into slippers beside the bed. Each foot scratched across the linoleum – the sound startling the Corpsman from his work. He raised his glowing bronze face toward it. The face smiled at Jonathon as he emerged from the shadowy backdrop of beds.

“You still up?”

“Like I said, I’m a night person…listen…Linton’s bag is full. If he drains anymore it’ll explode.”

“I’ll get it in a minute…I’ve gotta finish these charts.”

The ventilator hum filled the silence between each comment.

“Thompson, I can’t sleep…. Can I take a walk?”

“I don’t know – I’d catch hell if…. He examined the patient in front of him. “Where would you go?”

“Just down to the beach – and then back.”

The hum again. “All right. Put on some civvies. You can’t go like that.”

Jonathan merged with the darkness as he walked to his bed. He pulled civilian clothes from shelves in the bedside stand – levi’s, socks, a jersey, sneakers – and began to dress. Thoughts were constantly being pushed back, deep inside his head. Jonathan was tired of this place – not just the Naval Hospital in Pensacola – every place.

On the way out, Jonathan was stopped by the Corpsman. “Use the main entrance. Everybody’s down in Emergency this time of night.”

Jonathan nodded.

“Here, this might help.” Thompson opened his hand revealing a lighter shade of skin and a joint. Jonathan took it and nodded again. Five years earlier he would have smiled, thanked the Corpsman, and meant it. He wanted that again.

Outside, the gulf air was thick and humid from the day’s rain. Clumps and strands of moss hung from the low trees like entrails. The night was bright – the moon almost casting shadows on the asphalt road, still warm as it sloped down to the Inland Waterway. A three inch tree roach skittered into the moonlight. He stepped on it…crunch-squish, he thought. The dead roach, mosquitoes, and the chirping crickets were all that was left on Earth.

Salt and fish were in the air now, as he left the massy trees behind at the bottom of the road. He crossed the grass and then the gravel lot – breakers – there, he could see the sand, and the white foam surging toward him. Walking faster now, sand spilled into his shoes, deep sand, then smoother, harder, until he stopped. His feet gurgled inside wet shoes as he lit the joint and inhaled salt and fish and escape.

The moon – a full moon – glowed in the darkness over the gulf like Thompson’s shirt; and clouds gathered around her – angel hair on a Christmas bulb. Jonathan walked back to the firm dry sand and sat down with his arms on his knees. He could hear faint laughter – and music – from far down the empty beach. He smoked…hungrily, and watched a tiny flickering light which seemed to make the laughter – pulsing with it – where the sand curved off to the sea.

Jonathan stared at the pulsing flame with the joint held just beneath his nose. The distant ventilator hum blended with breakers as a rhythmic rushing flow. No thoughts, here – emptiness. He winced and tossed the hot ash into the sand. There, where it landed, was a glob of luminous gelatin…a jellyfish.

Looking up, he saw the moon reflected in the rolling water. The clouds around the moon were the only ones in the sky.

…and the stars – like flames on some other distant beach…but the clouds…they seem…they have shape – moon in the center – a splotch of white above – squarish shapes on the left and right - like benches…court benches…heads rising above…heads…that’s a head in the middle…over the moon…a ram?...horns – and the others…grotesque faces…faces…all the faces measuring us….

He vomited in the sand, tasting the bile in his nose – but - like it wasn’t from him…like it wasn’t from him.

Jonathan ran back to the ward. He washed and rinsed his mouth. He stowed his clothes and put his gown back on and stretched back on his bed.

And he went back to the cracks…cracks that needed to be filled and smoothed and coated with fresh paint. 

It's All So Clear....

If you

Were not

Then I would be

But would

Miss

The point.

We are

You and I

We had to be

For everything exists with no meaning

Until

Well

You and I

We are.

What Goes Around....

It was a small erector set...mom frequently found secondhand toys for us to play with...but it captured my imagination enough to spend hours creating things. Like most things I had, I can't remember now what happened to it. Now, I'm at the other end of life and learned that men my age need that toy again.

Boy, am I....

Ain't this place strange and wonderful and confusing and scary? Seems like every day it's more and more. It started for me when I was a boy...and the sky was full of stars and clouds and the moon. Why are they there? Why am I? Many questions and lots of clouds. And then the TV said the President was killed. And my dad beat hell out of mom. And, and, and.... Never stops...every day it's more.

Now I'm 65 and wonder how that is? I'm happy I'm not dead...I think. And don't have answers to the questions that boy asked. There are no answers. Just questions scudding across the blue sky on a fine day to breathe. And some damn fine people to share the air with. And awful people. A lot of awful people.

I am gonna watch those clouds make it to the other side of the sky and those stars fill it up...and share my air.