Kuwait Roofball

At twilight the dirty soccer ball became hard to see. The boys abandoned the broken street full of junked cars and climbed to the roof where they'd have a clear shot.

Out west, past five striped water towers resembling a 'yield' sign standing as a national landmark in Kuwait, an orange ball of sun whirled down into desert night. To the east, dark aquamarine colors deepened across the Arabian Gulf. Bloated bodies danced on shorelines.

Two Palestinian boys kicked the ball around inside the walled roof. One held a black semiautomatic pistol in the air with the safety on while delicately managing the ball off his bare foot. His bored dark haired friend chipped away at dusty plaster walls with a broken stick. Discarded brown carpets decorated checkerboard tiles.

The roof was divided by a half-story high extended wall of broken windows and chipped stucco. A collection of bent antennas resembling insect arms searching for prey probed the sky. The boys played on the clean side.

The other side of the building extension was scattered debris. An upside down discarded sofa covered with a gray and red ripped and sandblasted fabric resigned to its fate, waved in a useless wind.

A tricycle with worn rubber tires lay stranded next to a rusty ladder. Piles of sand, rocks and an old chair formed a belt fed 60-caliber machine gun nest near neatly stacked metal ammunition cases in the corner overlooking a ring road.

A pair of open-backed sandals served as a goal, guarded by a tall youth in a fragmented gray sweat suit. The ball bounced off the wall well controlled by the younger player as they patiently waited for the sound of tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbling down from Iraq.

They were ready for a new game.

Back Door Man - Ireland

One day young Padreig and I went into downtown Dublin for a movie, walked down Grafton Street past Trinity University and grabbed bus #44, a bright fire engine red double decker out to meet Mary, his mother in the suburbs where we lived. I was employed as an au pair and she managed a textile store.

We enjoyed a pleasant dinner as mist rolling east over Wicklow Mountains changed from rain to snow.
Someone knocked at the door, she excused herself, answered and led a male friend down the hallway into the kitchen leaving Padreig and myself alone in the front room.

They talked briefly and her guest left. As he was going out the door, Padreig opened the door leading to the hallway and said to me, “you should introduce yourself to Paul.”

I turned from the sofa and saw a man in a three piece suit, dark hair, about 5’ 9” standing in the doorway. His eyes were blurry from drinking. He didn’t say a word, giving me a hard vacant stare. Mary followed him, they had more words at his car before he drove off down the white street.

She came in and sat down. “This is a tricky situation,” she said. “See, we used how to date but aren’t seeing each other any more.” We let it pass.

Another knock at the front door. Padreig said it was Paul. Mary went to the door and came back in the room, telling me Paul wanted to talk. I got up. As I passed Mary said in low conspiratorial tone, “just tell him you are a friend.” I put on my boots and went out the door forgetting my coat and hat.

He was waiting outside and we started walking down the drive. He held his head down smoking a cigarette. I was filled with a sense of curiosity and uneasy anticipation. He spoke first.
“You know, I’m going to bust you.”
“Don’t you think we should introduce ourselves?”
“No, it’s not necessary.”
We left the drive and turned onto the sidewalk. He turned. “I’m gonna bust you.” My fear of future pain registered.

“Don’t you think we should introduce ourselves?” I asked again realizing that I was being confronted by an angry drunken man intent on killing me.
“Take your glasses off,” he commanded. I hesitated.
“Well, then I’ll leave,” I said hoping he would acknowledge my cowardice. I started to back away. He reached out and forcibly grabbed my sweater with his left hand and pulled back with his right, ready to throw a punch in my face.

I bought time. “Ok,” I said in a low voice, “I’ll take off my glasses before you hit me.”

He relaxed his grip and I started backing away. He moved forward lowering his head like a drunken bull. I anticipated it, dropped off to his right, he raised a fist quickly, smashing into the left side of my jaw. The force and my yielding with the blow broke his grip and I bolted away up the sidewalk, leaving fresh prints in the snow.

My heart pounded as I turned to see he was following. I ran faster. He followed in a drunken disoriented manner.

After turning a corner, I stopped to watch him plod through the snow. Terror flooded my cold body. The blow had been a glancing one but fear controlled my thoughts and I ran again, through a city council neighborhood, passing dark houses and parked cars.

I stopped at a corner. He kept coming. I ran for a field, feeling cold snow and ice collecting in my hair and eyes. I plodded across muddy fields passing people walking on trails finding refuge behind a tree safe from sight. He came into view, looked down the field, turned and disappeared. He’d lost the scent. I didn’t know what to do.

Return to Mary’s? Return home without a coat and hat? Try to see where he went? I decided to return, retrieve clothing and head home.

A corner offered shelter from passing cars. I hid in driveways watching people drive by, sure he'd got in his car and was searching for me. Nothing. Only falling snow. A person came out of a house across the street and knowing there was safety in numbers, I hailed the stranger and asked him if I could join him for a walk.

I jabbered out my fear to the stranger and kept a wary eye as we approached the intersection near Mary’s house.

I didn’t see Paul’s car anywhere but realized he could be waiting nearby. The stranger reassured me the coast looked clear so I went to the door, knocked and Padreig answered.

“Is Mary here?” Where is Paul?”
“He’s not here,” Padreig said opening the door. Mary came downstairs and I told her what happened.

“He came back,” she said, “and asked where you went. I told him you took a walk. I’m really sorry about all this.”

“No bother. I’m just glad I was able to get away from him without a broken nose.”
She related how Paul was married, they’d dated but she was trying to end the relationship, how he just happened to turn up. I listened and left looking both ways before walking through dark fields toward home.

“What are you doing here?” Mary said opening her door a few nights later.
“I just came by to see if I might spend the night,” I said stepping into the corridor. She turned and led me into the front room where grainy images of dancers twirled on the television. She sat down.

“I haven’t been able to talk to you at work and since you have no phone, I came over,” I said.
“Listen. I never wanted to have an affair and what happened is very unlike me. It can’t continue.”
“I see. I just thought maybe we could still see each other. You know I like you and want to spend time with you.”
“I can’t. The relationship has gone too far as it is."

Suddenly a car pull up in her drive. “It’s him! Come on,” she said. We ran down the hall into the kitchen.

“Turn on the light,” I said in a panic. The light came on as I fumbled to free the chain lock above the door. Her thin pale fingers were there, on the handle. The door opened into backyard blackness.

“Climb the fence, there’s no one home next door,” she whispered. I vanished into the night climbed the fence, watching them talking in the kitchen. I jumped another fence and left the relationship behind.

Five years later I was working on an archeology dig in the Middle East and one of our company’s clients, a Dutch museum expert, invited me over for dinner. A gleaming apartment block overlooking the Gulf. Expatriate heaven.

I arrived at the designated hour and pressed the buzzer. Mary answered the door. As beautiful as ever.

We both went into shy quiet shock masking the reality of our memorable past, slipping into comfortable experienced roles as we played through various introductions feigning the performance of totally complete and utter strangers meeting at a dinner party for the first time.

We exchanged smiles and casual handshakes moving among the guests wearing coiled anxiety silently recalling quiet love, uncomplicated snow storms, violence, running through muddy fields full of terror in another country years ago.

Mary was happily married to the curator and we survived the evening, the five course dinner engaging in lies, distortions, creating fabulous imaginary stories filled with where, when, why, and how of old time.

Fortunately for us, Padreig was out of the country or the strange but true evening when fate reconnected our small intimate worlds may have manifested into verbal Irish storytelling beyond our wildest dreams.

It's All A Myth!

“Its all a myth!” a wheelchair woman screamed rolling herself out of anger and fear Shadows into blazing Denver fried egg sunlight on Broadway passing Hispanic family sitting on suitcases in brief shade, joining thousands of devout Tibetan pilgrims singing praying laughing on dusty roads leading to Lhasa, throwing rocks at ravens at sky crystals making prostrations.

She rolled her chair past itinerant land locked terra-cotta warriors crashed on bags at Beijing and Shanghai train station crossroads at invisible terminal destinations.

She rolled past Elmore James standing at the crossroads treated like a slave sliding callused fingers on metal frets in selfless agony trading his soul to the devil, passing Balinese wood carvers etching delicate faces, jungle painters creating butterfly corporate murals, passing villagers harvesting rice in green highlands, passing outlawed Irish tinkers wandering village to village pounding pans, passing homeless people sleeping on a mattress in usa alleys facing the wall.

Passing naked evangelist on downtown street corner wailing wall forecasting human lust past devil myth propaganda nature’s unrestrained power, as unconscious forces internalize/externalize projecting guilty feelings on others the snake phallus symbol delights for envy, for quicksilver messenger service cycles spoke passing tanned cellular talkers waiting for bus to financial heaven, passing her white haired aunt in a nursing home painting her last vision, passing Ashiakawa loom weavers creating wool seasons, passing Himalayan sherpas brewing tea at 17,000 feet for expeditions paying hard currency to totalitarian emperors suffering altitude sickness, high blood pressure rolling past 31 flavors dining out making quick money honey living on plastic, riding scarred ranges in 4×4 drive where cockroaches ride roller blades devouring land, leftover 'develop-meants' hearing mutants scream "where is the water for God's sake? we paid for our thirst!"

Yes, she rolled past her only son, a soldier, waiting for NAM dustoff toward SF/CO and exile, state side rejection no sympathy for the devil - baby killers writing final letters home abbreviated napalm fire fight survival instincts remembering the horror etched on a screaming eagle black granite

wall 493 feet long rising from the ground to a height of 10.1 feet bending at the center at exactly a 125.12 degree angle - holding 58,235 NAMES as chopper blades reverberate - cut air, cut down stiff stale wind bloodstream vanities dive around jungle artifacts, lifting veils of cautious surrender.

Rolled past Arabic nomads exchanging goats/camels for pearls as oil desert-ed sand slowly envelops silk encrusted carpets passing refugees floating Asian marriage seas discovering family geological strata broken Chinese shipwrecks shifting divorce paradigms passing itinerant independent traveling hermits freezing eye/brain/muscles inside parabola boundaries extending imagination's independent practice - freeing unknown potentials squeezing, blinking eye blinded shutters B&W documentation art/reality/illusions of women in whirling 3rd world poverty wearing exploitation's cloth wrapped in solitude as economic fate breaks malnourished rocks along everlasting lonesome highway passages blasting, building capitalistic roads living in river reed hovels.

And she was gathering speed rolling her Greater Wheel passing university perspiration business mergers evaporating celestial horizontal degrees as hemispheric tropic of cancer eats bran for break down fast rivers flowing native tribal dialogues tongues speaking sky earth water fire languages of crow raven coyote ancient turtle islands mark of the king tattoo sailing water’s prison islands surrounded confounded by blue eyed Europeans full of commercial disease inventing, discovering cultural annihilation assimilation accommodation regaining indigenous cost - profit - past patience solitude-nature-silence just sitting - the doing nothing poem - storytelling, a vein in earth sky water pulse blood lava flows among dzongs chants flags sacrificing herself hard black wheels dancing Tao circles rolling herself past myth and maya into blazing wisdom free from bardo breath.

poet as language worker

Semi-truck roars through Lafayette Happy Valley
Spilling Cascade paper products on word winds

Rolls of newspaper headlines
Boxes of books and periodicals
Sheets of carefully scented toilet paper
Packages of 401K forms
2000 year old papyrus calendars for RA
Lists of pending to-dos
Bill of sale requirements
Deeds and lease agreements
Birth and death announcements

Shredded highly classified Top Secret
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
internal memo circulars
circus posters

Poetry books among books
spilling their lives
dangerous words
orchestra sheet music
directing a playwright’s
dialogue
character driven conflict

Plato
entertains grotto ghetto children
whispering laughing dancing in parchment leaves

eating the shadow of their dreams

Taos Pueblo Life Lessons

He went to the Taos Pueblo. It was hot. Over 100.
Dry, dusty, silent heat. He’d been here before and it called him back.

“Find something that speaks to you,” a Native American Tiwa woman said.

We walked past their cemetery where 150 women and children died when the church was burned by U.S. American soldiers during a Hispanic and Pueblo revolt in Taos after the American occupation in 1846. Wooden crosses scarred by sun, heat and dust stood in haphazard rows on brown ground. Plastic flowers. Names of children and elders chiseled in wood. A black and white rosary draped on a small cross marked a burial ground.

Due to shortage of space they bury the new dead on top of the old dead. Hard soil. White black and brown crosses faded in sun. Names, ages, children, parents, flowers, rosaries inside low adobe walls. The old bell in the burned out charred remains of the church steeple. A grim reminder.

The screams of the trapped women and children echoed as the attackers poured their modern civilization of guns and religion into the church. One moment it was quiet and then you heard children’s voices and there was no place for them to go, no chance of life.

“We left it that way,” a Tiwa girl said to us standing silent just seeing. Then she was gone, a vapor of spirit, a silent reminder of where we were and how we’d come to this place in the dust below sacred mountains and sky.

Of all the pueblos in New Mexico the Taos pueblo has the most magic, the deepest significance. Power. It sits on hundreds of thousands of acres, all sacred Indian ground, sacred forested mountains, with sacred rivers and lakes. Adobe brown buildings stand stacked on top of each other to the sky. Blue doors. Wooden ladders, red chilies hanging from walls in the sun. It is a hieroglyphic of habitats. The ancient homes and sacred living space.

A young brown eyed Tiwa woman explained their life; language, the small adobe cooking kilns for baking breads and pies, how they mixed straw and mud to form adobe buildings, maintained dwellings and the number of people living on the pueblo and those on connected reservations.

A matriarchal society. No women sit on the fifty member tribal council. Tiwa is the language on the Pueblo and a pure oral transmission. Nothing is written down. Sacred words.

“Tiwa means ‘wee-who,’” she said. “It means when you give, expect nothing in return. When you give you open that corridor of energy for yourself and your kind or your people, your vibrations and it is filled with goodness. Great powers or awareness are within it so that it decends upon you and places in you whatever that gift is that your supposed to get. That’s what giving does. It awakens placement. It brings down clarity.

“We are people from the Source - the center of the circle of light. The No-Form creates the form.

“In the Tiwa language there are no nouns or pronouns. Things have no distinct concrete existance. Everything is in motion and seen in it’s relationship to other motions. The power is not in words but in sounds made in saying and pronouncing words.

“Each of us is a ceremony, a vibration of All-That-Is. We are the vast self.”

+ + +

Inside a pueblo room a woman named Sunflower painted intricate black and white spider web designs on her pots. Her gift streamed in an out, weaving geometric colors. Her brush dipped into black ink, her left hand inside the pot turned it as she etched a black line. Diamonds, circles, rectangles, a sun eye and sun god dancing black on white.

We wandered across a small stream running down from sacred mountains. A stream carrying water to nourish the pueblo. Healing liquid. Water flowed during the 4th year of a 10 year drought.

We visited with men and women in their small shops selling turquoise, beads, arrows, water, silver bracelets, postcards, drums, pottery and stories. A man and his drums made from animal skins. Bead work. Blue stones the color of the sky.

A brown dog slept in the dust of mid-day sun. Crude serviceable wooden ladders extended from earth to adobe roofs to clear blue sky. Indian women sat under ramada lattice poled roofs talking with friends. They waited for tourists, waited to answer questions hoping to sell their work.

A woman from Miami and her three kids passed. Her blond kids carried water bottles and wore floppy khaki hats. Kids having the time of their lives shuffled their boots in the dirt studying ants. They’d never been this far west before. Their mother was tired. They kept her going.

We met a Tiwa man and listened to his story about hunting. Furs and pelts hung on his hitching post. It was cool inside his place. He wore a t-shirt of an American flag wrapped around an Indian on horseback shooting a buffalo. “Hunting, The American way,” it said.

“Yes,” said the man with a long dark face and sad eyes, “I took my boys, when they were young enough, up into the mountains, the sacred mountains here and taught them how to hunt.”
They hunted bear, cougar, rabbit, fox and elk.
“A bear,” we said. “How do you kill a bear?
“In the lung. When they charge you hold your ground. One arrow in the lung. It stops them immediately.”
“Do they fight you, do they run?”
“No, they do not fight you. They stop. They die.”

An elk head with many points looked down on us from his wall. “And the elk?”
The fur, the neck, huge brown eyes - “one arrow brought him down,” he said, pointing to his kill.
“How close did you get?”
“Ten feet. We tracked him for three days. We studied him well. I taught all my boys the art, the skill of the hunt. We started early that day, it was day three, we camped, we tracked him for three days. We knew where he grazed, where he went for water, where he slept.”

The elk on the wall was big and eyed silent. No startled look. Black nose for smelling down wind, up wind, all the sacred mountain winds. Ten point antlers streaked with brown maturity.
“How did your boys do?”
“They learned well. I started them young. We all do but not everyone here learns as early as my boys. I learned from my father and he learned from his father. We took our pack horses and left the pueblo and moved into the mountains, high in the mountains. We camped by a rivers and tracked their prints, their habits, their patterns. Three days was all it took.”
“It’s the simplicity of it all,” we said. “It’s the spirit of the animal isn’t it? You know their energy.”

“You become one with the animal. You become the animal.”

His bow and arrows hung on the white wall. Rock flints. Sharpened points.
“Then what happened?”
“On the day of the kill we were up before dawn. We broke camp. We moved to the river. The elk came down to drink and didn’t smell us. We were in the rushes, hidden. We were ten feet away. One arrow,” he said, pointing to the elk on his wall, “there, in the neck. He fell fast. We used everything.”

“My boys learned well. I have three of them and now they are grown and my work here is done.”