POEM WRITTEN
ON A DARK SUNDAY AFTERNOON
 
So it has come to this
73 years, days and nights
Of aches and pain
Soon to turn seventy-four
lady death a lurking whore
harder still to write
73 years and I still haven’t
got it down right
wandering in sightless sight
And I do not fear death
I will fight her with every breath
Aches and pains aside
I treasure my daily walk
a morning cup of coffee
An evening glass of wine
gossip with a friend
and yet I am but a guest
In this body as my father was in his

The silence of winter approaches
a telescope that scopes my mind
I walk inside my head
an unexplored canyon where
gulag monsters lurk
Serving minute portions of filet mignon
To the chosen elite
God and Jesus competing with me for attention
One plays with thunder one with lightning
Satan answers with a tornado
Man left with nothing but genocide
And mass terror
 
The months multiply into years
the saxophone my holy father
the drummer my sacrament
Poetry my substance
what better pallbearers to scatter
my ashes into the wind

A.D. WINANS
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
 
 

 PAGE 12

I Am Afraid

 At night sleeping in a tent, I am afraid. I feel very exposed and vulnerable. The walls of the tent are not very thick. One slash with a sharp knife could open a wall very quickly. There I would be-only half awake, weaponless, and in my underwear. It would be difficult to use my two major deterrents to vulnerability, the ones that keep me going: confidence and humor. Confidence and humor are things you can’t even see. They would mean little in the middle of a night in my underwear facing my assailants with nothing but a slashed tent wall between us.

 Sleeping in the tent I am not far from a lightly traveled dirt road that leads from the fishing village to civilization. It’s mostly friendly people from the village that use it, but then there are always people who come out here to smoke a cigarette and look at the sea. And there is such a thing as drunkenness. How many times have I heard the words-”What you have would seem like a lot to them”- echo in my head. I never listen to that stuff, but in the dark night, alone in the tent, those words are involuntarily replayed.

 So I am afraid. Every night I think of it.  I hide my valuables-my blue passport, my black wallet with my real drivers’ license, my ATM card, and my twenty dollar bills and my fifties. I leave my brown wallet in plain sight, sort of, not too obvious. It has an old passport with two holes poked in it by the U.S. Customs, it has some  pesos and some dollars but not too many, it has an old drivers’ license with just one hole poked in it by the New Mexico Department of  Motor Vehicles, an old credit card and an old ATM.  It’s a decoy.  That ought to fool them, I say to myself. When the slashers take it I’ll act like it’s important. I’m a good actor, I tell myself. I did it in college. They will think they really have something.

 Each night I have to remember where I put the real stuff and the fake stuff. The first couple of nights I stick with the plan pretty well, but the longer I stay I get more comfortable with my camp. Maybe you would say that I’m letting my guard down, but I’m having trouble remembering where stuff is. Some part of my mind is laughing at my efforts. It seems like a big joke on me.

 Last night I heard a noise. I got up and unzipped the tent door. It was dark. All was still except for the mild sounds of the sea. There were a lot of stars hanging overhead and the crescent moon was shaped in a crooked smile. I smiled back, but my smile didn’t last as long as the moon’s. I hear noises almost every night.

 I feel vulnerable in motels too. A door can be kicked down in one second– almost as fast as the slashing of a tent wall. I guess the greatest safety feature of a motel is that you are in the proximity of other people. The bad part about motels is that you have to sleep in beds and use bathrooms that one thousand other people have used. I try not to think about someone slashing the wall of a tent with a machete, but there are some things that don’t always leave your mind like they are supposed to.

 I think about my bedroom in my house back in Las Cruces. That is my favorite place to sleep. I am used to it. I have my own bed and my own blankets and my own sheets. I have my own bathroom. There are brick walls around me which could not be slashed in one second with a machete no matter how sharp. It’s true the doors really could be kicked in pretty fast and I would still be standing there half awake, in my underwear, lacking in confidence and humor. Someone could take my valuable stuff-my guitar, my car, my black wallet with the plastic cards, even my life if they wanted it. I don’t think about it all that much, but even at home I hear noises during the night. I keep a golf club under my bed. I don’t play golf, but I have always thought that a golf club is a terrible weapon. Better than a tennis racket and better than a knife, but not as good as a gun. Nothing is as good as a gun. That’s fine. I don’t want a gun. No. A gun is just taking this whole thing too far. A golf club is as far as I can go.

 Still I am afraid at night and I wish I didn’t think like that. I wish I could look out and see nothing but peace and that peace would, therefore, be the only thing attracted to me.

 Today the sea was extremely calm in the morning. From the shore I looked out at the smooth, light blue surface. The pelicans in a great flock of one hundred were in a frenzy not far from shore. Like dive bombers they were splashing into the water for fish. It musthave been one of  those schools which contain one million small fish. I knew the waters would be totally clear and the undersea visibility would be almost unlimited.

 I went out far and I stayed out long peering down into the undersea world from the surface where that world meets the completely different world of air. Everything under the water is afraid. The first thing all those creatures are worried about is this: Is someone gonna get me? The fish dart away or swim cautiously away one eye behind them. Other creatures make moves to get under rocks. The sting rays are skeptical of everything. So I was thinking: Is this the natural way of life on this planet? To be afraid?

 Yesterday I walked in the desert. I saw a roadrunner, I saw wild dogs, huge jackrabbits, some kind of medium-sized cat, and horses running loose. They all ran away from me. They were afraid.

 During the day I am not afraid. I talk to people. I enjoy it. I can speak English. I can speak a little Spanish. I am not like the fish or the desert animals, wary of everything. During the day I have my confidence and my humor; I can deal with it-whatever it is. But at night, sometimes, I am afraid.

LARRY STOCKER
LAS CRUCES, NM