Do we only write what we know? And is this effort poorer because of that?

I find it terribly absurd to think that all my memories are real, especially those dealing with the times of war.  I can remember when I would put on a 50 pound ruck and move through the most dense jungle on earth, cautiously and with much labor, traveling with young men like myself, moving less than a kilometer a day in search of ways to kill other young men.  Daily, we would move against this oppression of infinite hardship, killing and destroying, being killed and destroyed in turn.  Endless weeks of vicious boredom marked by a minutes horrible agony.  How we joked of the ways we could suffer, and loved one another with a mean affection and a deadly touch.  

Soldiers and fighting men we were, all from the ancient ages of 18 to 23, except the platoon sergeant, he was old, almost 30, and the Captain only a year younger.  We had seen more violent death on our walks in this country club than most cops could claim; and in the third world squalor of the villages, more disease than most doctors even imagined.  We had illiterate privates who could diagnose malaria, plague, and 3 or 4 malnutrition diseases.

It comes down to whatever we could handle
All the late hours of hanging out in our own skulls
Strolling carelessly to the sounds of hidden memory
Denying whatever might cost.
Most of the books deal with coping
With being able to handle life
With belief and ability and desire.
I think in terms of energy.
Is it worth it any longer
To expend energy to achieve a lie?
Once, we celebrated Ho Chi Minh‘s birthday.

Here I am going home to my father
Over vast clouds and mountains
His voice is calling to me
Soft with the light of summer.
He used to rest outside for a little hour
On a Sunday after Mass.
He has been my granite wall
And hard fought friend
He has worked
And raised a dozen or more children.
In his rest the machines
keep breath in his tired lungs
I owe him.  More then the earth.
I want him to breathe softly
To know we love him deeply and then
Like the autumn we never suspect
Fly away with the winds of summer

(The ground which forgives all our sins
And loves us dearly in the end)

Among the story of my father are the unwritten letters to Lowell, David, Joe, Patience, and all the others, they stand accusing.  Sometimes there is a striving for beauty and for the pictures of the things and the emotions.  Sometimes all this longing is paralyzing and the soul writes the letters but never sends the words.

I do not want the politics and the purpose.  What I need is the expression and beauty, and deeply, the showing of humanity as human.  Not as dogma, not as that thing which is politically right or judicious; but as that thing which is humanly felt, born of care and love and longing.  Expressed not efficiently or out of correct purpose, but expressed cleanly out of beauty and spoken with a lovers touch.


PoetryWriting