The Clown

The garish pasty visage of a corpse;
Greasepaint smelling more like formaldehyde;
Red hair reminiscent of Banquo's gory locks,
Lipstick that's been smeared on too thickly,
As though applied by a drunken mortician.

Clothes that don't fit.

Is it any wonder that we recoil in horror
When a clown in its oversized shoes
Fixes its hideous gaze upon us,
Then clumps its exaggerated gait toward us;
Grotesque goosesteps of malice,
Hands outstretched like a zombie
In search of brains to devour.

It's a visage that is meant to entertain us,
Yet it's the face of death that we recoil from,
The unnatural rouge of funeral cosmetics
In a carnival setting.

As the horrible harlequin lumbers toward me
I laugh, feigning the mirth that's expected,
But I have all I can do to restrain my impulse to

RUN!

Weathering

The scent of antiseptic sterility,
The hard steel exam table, morgue cold
To the touch, left me feeling none too bold.
It tends to shrivel one's vitality,
This search for rogue cells that can kill a man.
The refrain, "my body, it's been a good friend,
But I won't need it, when I reach the end,"
From Cat Steven's Tea for the Tillerman
Drifts through my mind; the scan is reality,
A jolt, a reminder of one's mortality.

Like a stray dog the years dog our footsteps,
Impervious to our kicks and curses.
Youth cocksure becomes age that rehearses
Humble prayers and turns to sacred texts
To prepare for an audience with death.
The inexorable onslaught of time
Testifies as mortality's witness
As endurance ebbs to shortness of breath.
As if being wracked for some crime unknown
Strong limbs with arthritic stiffness groan

Volcanic passion thrust forth an island
Of sea-defying smugness, basalt proud.
Time-weathered now, a reef on which gulls crowd.
Presaging a water-shrouded shoal of sand.
If we could just choose to halt time's ravage
Of our island at some youthful time of desire,
Our proud landmark outcrop that waves savage
Could rebuff them to harmless spray and aspire
to an eternity.  But perish we must.
Time's relentless waves beat us into dust
Just as islands to sand, and iron to rust.

Saying Goodbye to One Who Can't Comprehend It.

Hospice had given him roughly two weeks to live.
I understood that he was gravely ill, but still
I walked past my father when I first saw him.
My mind couldn't equate the image of the frail being
Strapped in a wheelchair, head bowed in drug-numbed dullness
With the strong, virile man that he had been in the past.
Prepared as I was, I still just couldn't comprehend it.

There are unfeeling, mean-spirited, selfish souls
Who can abandon a trusting pet along some road
Without a twinge of conscience or remorse.  Then
Of course, there are the abusers and conniving users
Who can discard someone who has given them their love
As callously as you or I throw away a tissue,
But that's not an issue.  You cannot defend it.

This was a time though when I wished I functioned that way.
My thoughts twisted and coiled as I groped for what to say.
It's so hard to say goodbye to someone that you love,
Knowing that they can't comprehend that you're doing so.
I grasped my father's hand and I believe that he knew me.
He struggled to address me, but couldn't frame the words.
It hurt me to see him in pain, knowing I couldn't mend it.

I kept waiting for something to click, some unspoken
Bond to link us together.  At times I could almost see
The man that is trapped inside the body that has failed him
Clawing to get out.  It had to be so frustrating for him.
There was no sense of finality, no closure for me either.
Just a dull empty ache that will remain unfulfilled;
A garden of regrets that's waiting for me to tend it.

It's so hard to say goodbye to someone that you love,
Knowing that they can't comprehend that you're doing so,
Knowing that the constants of his strength, his presence
And his love are fading away, like a radio signal
That loses strength as you travel further away from it.
The ravages of age have decided my father's fate;
I'll denounce the decision, but there's no way I can amend it.

The Rifleman

The opening’s punctuated by a penis level ejaculation of gunfire;
Sam Peckinpaugh overdubbed a staccato barrage of thirteen shots
From a rifle that could only fire eleven bullets.  Hollywood license.
“A gun is not a plaything, Mark.” says Lucas McCain
As he twirls his eighteen ninety two forty caliber Winchester
Three hundred sixty degrees to cock it.  Deft wrist action
Aided by a round ring welded to the gun to facilitate a feat
As ominous and threatening as a Samurai brandishing a sword. 

“My pa’s the best shot in the whole world,” boasts Mark McCain.
As the camera pans away from the “bad guy” with the gaping hole
In his chest, who in his death throes is vainly attempting to stuff
His intestines back into where they belong,   The camera swings
To Lucas McCain, his arm around the shoulders of his son Mark,
As they walk away, their backs to the carnage.  Lucas looks down
At his worshipful son and says, “I’m sorry you had to see that, Mark."
Another cowboy tries vainly to crawl away, his spine shattered.

 “Are you up for a piece of cherry pie, Mark?” he asks, now
Just a sod-busting rancher attempting to raise a son.  A farmer
Who just happens to be one of the fastest guns in the West.
Living a male fantasy life devoid of the encumbrance of a wife,
With a boy to mold in his own gun-toting, clenched jawed,
Two-fisted, God-fearing image; an instrument of divine justice,
The one man moral code of the frontier town of North Fork
Glowering at the camera as he reloads while striding forward.

He turns to blast the thug who’d fired a shot at Sheriff Micah,
The  broken-down rummy  he’d pulled out of the gutter, buoyed up
And made a lawman of again in a previous episode.  In the world
Of "The Rifleman" men either have to "man up" or die.  The camera
Pans away again so as not to show the widening pool of blood
Seeping into the street.  “Now, off to school, Mark.
Don’t let that fancy schoolmarm from out East fill your ears
With any more of her bleeding-heart anti-gun nonsense.”

Lucas McCain, Moses, the Duke, and the Gipper.  Roles that elevated
Men to North Fork, Mount Sinai, the Alamo  and The White House.
Last I heard of the four, before Alzheimer’s or lung cancer got them all,
They were sitting beneath the HOLLYWOOD sign, passing a bottle
While practicing their legendary marksmanship by shooting at stars.
John Wayne shot at Polaris and missed.  So did Heston and Reagan.
Shortly after Chuck Connors fired, a meteor blazed into the atmosphere.
"That’s how it's done, boys,” he said, flashing  his best television grin.

 Rich Hanson

Mr. Death

You've been a hard man to get to know, Mr. Death.
As a boy you came to me in the guise of a teacher
Attempting to console me in my sob-wracked grief;
Or you'd appear in the holy robes of a preacher
Laboring ineffectively to explain the inexplicable,
The dark,unfathomable descent into oblivion,
In terminology incomprehensible to a child.

As a teen you were my laconic black-leather buddy
Scorning consequences with a James Dean sneer,
Then a dismissive "don't sweat any of that shit, guy;
You're immortal."  From suicide machines to fast cars,
From drunken debauches to drug-induced euphoria
You partied with us; raising a glass to our departed friends
While smugly savoring their testosterone-driven deaths.

After I settled down, married and began to act less selfish,
I began to fear you'd summon me, leaving my family bereft.
You donned an insurance agent's budget rack attire,
Smarmy smile and over the top concern to pressure premiums
To guarantee my family's safety.  Then you became a pedophile
Lurking in the park, a drunk driver careening down the street;
Random evil out there plotting to take my child from me.

Now you've become Time; the cruel devourer of my dreams.
I see lines you've carved upon my face as I gaze into the mirror,
I feel you in my aching joints that used to be so supple;
I hear you in the shrieking whine of a siren in the distance
As an ambulance speeds frantically toward some destination
That I pray is not the home of someone that I love.  If so,
I touch your white parchment skin in a funeral casket.

Mr. Death, I've wondered at you, driven with you,
Dealt with you, feared you, and foolishly tried to outrun you.
I am not ready to let you take me by the hand yet.
I know that there will come a day when you will come for me,
Perhaps in the guise of some dear departed loved one
Whose familiar visage will reassure me as you gently lead me
Into your inescapable realm of eternal repose.

When sickness, loneliness or despair drive me into your arms,
I'll relish the moment when I part the curtain of superstition,
Lift the veil from your head and at last finally view your face;
Something I could never have hoped to see during my life,
But something that I've always both feared and longed to do.
This tumult of experience and emotion that we call "Life"
Is wearing me down, Mr. Death.  Be patient.  I'll be along anon.

Final Disposition

Generations of beings have returned to dust
Leaving no deeds worthy of note
Nothing written that we remember
No songs that are still sung

Count me among their number.
Give me no hulking stone
No grieving angel
No pithy epitaph

I've done nothing to deserve
Such immortality

Just dump my ashes
Into the St. Louis River.
Let me drift into Lake Superior
To mingle with her
To become part of her
Immutable beauty

That will be enough

What Lies Beyond

Since I believe that there's no God,
No Satan, no heaven, no hellfire.
Since I believe that when we expire
We need fear no judgement rod.
Why do I cling to every breath?
Why do I still fear death?

"Operation Iraqi Freedom"

Pity the poor soldiers
Whose deaths are demeaned
By that dubious assertion
Etched on their headstones
For all eternity.

Damn the Administration
That offends all decency
By defacing their dignified
White military markers
With political propaganda.

Letting Go of Louise

(A poem written for my wife, Nancy,
 Shortly after the death of her mother, Louise.)

I wish I could weave the language of love
Into a comforter to keep you warm.
I wish you could take my prayers with you
As lanterns to illuminate your path.
I wish that my embrace could hold you back
From your appointment with eternal sleep.
I wish that I could accompany you
For part of your story, like Orpheus,
Who dared Death's dark realm for his beloved.

Like you stood with me my first day of school
As we waited together for the bus;
That big orange Bluebird coming to wrest me
From the security blanket
Of my home's familiar surroundings.
Unlike the old Marvin Rainwater song,
I didn't want to "find me a bluebird" that day,
But you lingered there with me and held my hand.

Now it's your turn to go away.
I've never seen a baby enter this world
Without anguished tears and wails;
It's tiny fists flailing at the indignity
Of being pushed from the comfort of the womb.
I've watched too many friends leave this life
With a final sigh of welcome relief.

Mom, I'll be there to hold your hand
Until the end, but I can't go there with you.
Take my love with you though; like a nightlight
Let it be there to comfort and reassure you.
If there is an afterlife, may yours be
As beautiful as the lake you were named for.

Ethan Allen on his Deathbed

The old blasphemer was dying.
His physician knew that there was no hope
Of recovery short of a miracle
For a man who believed in none,
But as a Christian, he felt it his duty
To try to bring the sinner to Jesus.
The dying man had once been a hero.
He and his Green Mountain Boys
Had wrested Ticonderoga,
The most formidable fort on the continent,
From its surprised British garrison.

The doctor donned a look of concern
That he hoped would also convey
The compassion of a merciful God
As he entered the dying man's bedroom.
What a coup it would be to wrest his soul
From Satan's claws with a deathbed conversion.
What luster it would add to his own reputation;
The man who pulled Ethan Allen from darkness.

"General, I fear the Angels are waiting for you,"
He piously intoned, his hands clasped
In front of his belt buckle as if in prayer.

The old patriot glared up at him,
Then mustered up his remaining strength
And angrily retorted,

"Waiting are they?
Waiting are they?

Well, goddam 'em
Let 'em wait!"