slouchingtowardspoetry

On Lao TZU CH. 20

2011-07-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

ABSURD INNOCENCE

It don't make no sense

Bottom of my heart falls right out

Screwed up again, and know it

My time to feel like an idiot

All enthusiasm suddenly disappears

The crowd is jeering, not cheering, my parade

Don't know what the hell I need

Just a fool belonging nowhere, to no one

A point of darkness lost in brilliance

Dullness amid sharpness

Uncertainty floundering in a whirlpool of purpose

A single wave at sea, tiny, of no significance

A single gust of wind, feint, of no consequence

Confused and absurd, like a newborn at her mother's breast.

ON LAO TZU CH. 19

2011-07-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

WHAT SHALL WE DO?

What shall we do about the

Wise and holy men who offer

Perpetual war and the

Death of the planet in exchange

For industry and profit?

Abandon them.

Pay attention to our own selves.

On Lao Tzu, Ch. 18

2011-07-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

HUMMINGBIRDS AND THE SUN

Pretending to be good,

we often forget the innocence of the sun

and the divinity of hummingbirds.

Terrorized by rape,

we tend to rage at our children, and to

think of that as love.

In despair of freedom, we ask that

the most dreadful men condescend

to be our masters.

Believing ourselves lost,

without protection in

space and time,

burdened by impotence,

We abandon the courage to see

that we are all as innocent as the sun

and divine, like hummingbirds.

- Don Brennan

on lao tzu ch. 17

2011-05-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

DARK AND SILENT (soliloquy)

You’re always dragging my ass out into these bright shiny places you love so much.

Don’t you get it? Truth travels in the dark as well as in the light.

And this noise, this shouting out your various ecstasies. . .

Missing out on silence isn’t my idea of a good time.

And just where, may I ask, did you acquire the need to find spotlights everywhere and to dance in them?

Quiet conversation seems to whisper, in your ear, only of loss; stir your mind’s most profound fears, as though your soul were fragile, ephemeral, about to head for the black holes; to disappear forever.

Don’t you get it? Truth, joy, faith and hope also whisper in the dark; also dwell in the silent places you’re determined to avoid.

The light is lost in itself without darkness, and without them both, we cannot see.

Also, noise and silence need one another, just like I need you and you, I believe and hope, need me.

- don brennan Tao, Ch. 17.

On lao tzu ch. 16

2011-05-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

PEACE

When your neck snaps

like an awakening,

Jerking you back as a

cur on a leash about to

roll in something dead,

You are reminded.

Progress does not flow

from wallowing

in a Lazyboy.

You growl in protest.

This world is suffering.

Only emptiness is peace.

- Tao, Ch. 16

on lao tzu ch. 15

2011-05-19T14:39:00.000-07:00

LEGENDARY TEACHERS

You might see, from time to time,

one of those profound and subtle

teachers striding carefully, as though

crossing an iced-over stream.

You might notice that she is acutely

alert, as though murderers and thieves

had been reported in the neighborhood.

Yet you might marvel at his courtesy

under duress, as though he were a guest

in your home.

These legendary teachers are themselves

fluid, like plunging waterfalls, yet patient

as hewn stones awaiting a sculptor.

She can often seem dark and mysterious,

an immense cavern beneath the earth,

as opaque as muddy water.

Who can wait without complaint for the

mud to settle? Who can be still until

action is necessary?

Legendary teachers, who need not seek

fulfillment in what is transitory, find

a way to live without clinging

to desire.

- don brennan Tao Ch. 15

on lao tzu ch. 14

2011-05-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

EMPTY US

sometimes we creep to the

edge of the void, lean way

over, squint our eyes, and

see nothing.

so we close our eyes and

just listen for some clues,

yet hear nothing.

so we reach way over the

edge, stretch out our arms,

but find nothing to grasp.

that is how we learn to

stand, to turn and to walk

our paths through this

transitory life;

neither seeing, nor hearing,

nor in possession of our own

emptiness.

- don brennan Tao Ch. 13

on lao tzu ch. 13

2011-05-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

HOPING FOR SUCCESS

Success and Hope love to dance

at a dizzying pace, like mismatched

ballerinas or underweight strippers

bumping and grinding on a bartop

for five dollar tips.

Failure and Fear are always in the

audience applauding, jeering,

wishing they too might take the

stage one day; get their own

stockings stuffed.

Outside in the cold night air,

the soul of humanity waits

patiently for the show to be

over.

- don brennan, Tao, ch. 13

on lao tzu ch. 12

2011-05-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

WHAT SHE SAID

what she said filled my eyes

with too many colors to see,

deafened my ears that were

straining to listen.

she was attempting by her

silence to convince me to

stay by her side after she

dissappears.

what she said strengthened

my desperate heart, drew

my attention to all that

must be left unspoken.

each life means everything

is what she said.

- don brennan TAO ch. 12

Response to Lao Tzu, Chapter 11

2011-05-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

BIKE WRECKS

Without emptiness we

would lack, at best,

our three dimensions.

Bike wrecks would be

unavoidable.

Flowers would remain

unarranged.

Left without rooms,

would we simply be

crushed?

Not-being sustains

all that exists,

Does she not?

- don

Response to Lao Tzu, chapter 10

2011-05-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

THE STRUGGLE

A mind overrun by monkies, a

Body made rigid by age, an

Inward vision lost in fog, a

Desire to control, shrinking

the soul.

What is to be done?

Surrender.

Response to Lao Tzu, chapter 9

2011-05-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

DISTRACTION

This carving knife is dull.

I apologize, and also beg your

Pardon for spilling your tea.

Pehaps I am distracted by

My fear of poverty, or

What you might think of me.

Poet's response to Lao Tzu, Chapter 8

2011-05-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

VIOLENCE AND DESIRE

Violence and desire

are not unknown

to one another.

For whatever reasons,

these two sometimes

hang out, have a few

drinks together in our

brains, in our hearts.

Get drunk and

disorderly for their

pleasure in the two

most lavishly decorated

rooms of consciousness.

On such occasions,

violence and desire

like to bully peace and

justice, torment them;

Slap the virtuous prigs

around; force the pair

to seek refuge in deeper,

darker, quieter, simpler

regions of the mind.

Force them to turn for

reassurance, for intimacy

to humility and kindness.

- Tao Ch. 8

POET'S RESPONSE TO LAO TZU, CHAPTER 7

2011-05-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

BAD INFLUENCE

The truth can’t die because

she wasn’t born, so she just

hangs around, lively as a

bad influence

Pestering us to recognize a

clue now and then, reminding

us that life is just as long

as it is short

Confusing us with irony and

paradox and other bits of magic

as she scratches the ears of coyotes,

suggesting ways for them to

trick us into waking up.

But we just complain that life is

too hard, so we ignore her advances

and doubt her existence because

We have kids and jobs and taxes,

the country is at war,

The economy’s

a wreck, most of us are poor, so

who needs the truth, and what’s she

ever done for anybody anyway? We

all know how to lie to get by;

Ain’t that the truth?

- don brennan Tao Ch. 7

Poet's response to Lao Tzu, Ch. 6

2011-05-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

GREAT MOTHER

Both oceans groan

She moves her hips

The continents drift

Two or three volcanoes

Roar into life

She bites her lip

Great waves rise up

To brush the mountain

Tops with kisses

She screams and reaches

To grip my hand, then

Curses, drenched in sweat

I grit my teeth and

Beg her forgiveness

That’s when she

Laughs at me

For being afraid.

- don brennan CH. 6

Poet's response to Lao Tzu, Ch. 5

2011-05-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

AS YET

Spin around and you will see

the good guys

Cranking up their chain saws

sharpening drill bits

loading incendiary bombs

See the good guys pouring fire

from the sky

dropping stunned and silent

trees to their knees

punching leaking oil holes

beneath the seas

Spin around and you will see

how the good guys make us

weep

But do not judge, just meditate

or go to sleep

As yet, we are too

incompetent, some of

our teachers are wont

to preach,

To understand ...

To comprehend the greater

good: the kids at

home, Mom and Dad,

(whom the bankers, now,

have come to own).

Too incompetent, as yet, to

perceive the benign

necessity of keeping global

slave markets free;

The stocks and bonds that

must be sold for "greater

goods", like splintered lumber

to foreign lands.

So, as is brilliant and just,

some teachers walk among

us suggesting, in the interest

of careers? Or is it sanity?

We ought not judge because

we are, as yet

Too blind to see,

Too ignorant to understand.

- don brennan TAO CH. 5

POET'S RESPONSE TO LAO TZU, Chapter 4

2011-04-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

TRUE OF TRUTH

Is it true that truth is a deep water well

more ancient than divinity; a water well

older than earth, older than water?

A well so deep and clean that we

can draw from its darkness for

all the generations of human need.

The need of the first woman to

wash blood from the eyes and

lips of the first human child.

A child struggling between her

legs in the African grass where

the first human birth pains had

brought her to her knees.

Is it true that truth is an

unpolluted water well

in constant use but

never used up?

A liquid void, cleaner than time,

colder than space, as empty as

infinity, never fouled nor dry?

It was surely true that truth

was pouring forth to purify the

first mother’s first child.

Is it likewise true that those

waters will be waiting to

cleanse the final mother’s

final child?

- don brennan Tao Ch.4

Poet's response to Lao Tzu, Chapter 3

2011-04-29T20:20:00.002-07:00

NO GROVELING

Groveling before the violent,

sneaking envious glances at

their greed as we bleed

has the desired effect of

rendering us irrelevant.

Theft creates both poverty

and the power to steal even

more, which is done to us

insidiously, with calculated

corporate efficiency.

And so we turn to teachers

of spirituality to inform us

of the benefits of virtue and

humility.

Without reaching out their

hands or writing us any

cheques, our gurus seek

to inspire equanimity.

Kindness, peace and love

are somehow superior to

wallowing in dollars, we

are assured, and

It is highly

recommended that we

stop our groveling, and

Look within.

- don brennan Tao Ch. 3

Poetic response to Lao Tzu, Chapter 2

2011-04-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

THESE ORDINARY THINGS

These things which each day

run circles in our minds

create phenomenal performances,

using the brain for a stage.

Doing pirouettes, leaping higher

than air, thick or thin, they don’t

seem to care.

Attempting to drift like rose petals

in a storm, using our astonished

eyes all the while as spotlights.

Dipping low as rainfall

seeking its own level.

Twirling near, then far in

effortless pas de deux.

Yet their incessant drama seems

incomprehensible, beyond our reach.

These ordinary things are short as

time, and just as long; both right and

wrong, like harmony and song.

Still we pursue their meanings until

we stumble upon some ancient truth,

claiming victory with a gasp,

yet running last.

- don brennan Tao Ch. 2

Lao Tzu

2011-04-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

A Lao Tzu Project:

I am working on a "re-interpretation" of Tao Te Ching, an 81 chapter summation of his personal spirituality compiled by Lao Tzu (551 - 479 B.C.E.). My interpretations are based primarily on the translation of the Tao Te Ching published by Stephen Mitchell in 1988. Then, in response to each chapter, I am composing a poem. The poetry below will eventually consist of 81 different pieces, each in response to its corresponding chapter of Lao Tzu, whose work, according to Mitchell, is "The most widely translated book in world literature, after the Bible." - Don Brennan 04-23-2011

1. NOTHING WE DO 03-06-11

Everything we look for

behind our backs or in dusty

corners is always waiting like a

birthday surprise, or a memory.

A single glass bead, fallen

from its broken carnival chain,

stepped upon, tripped over,

kicked behind the back into a

cranny amongst the dust bunnies.

In the search for what is lost

we tend to tangle ourselves

into slap-stick webs in order to

trip ourselves into miracles.

We even take hope from rubbing

noses with near death experience,

or even drugs, alcohol and other

petty methods of destruction.

But struggling in fear to find a way,

we lose ourselves even further.

Until in despair, in dread,

the search is abandoned.

In exhaustion and abandoment, the

desire to be found loses its strangle

hold, breaks its bones and fingers

upon the lies we have told ourselves.

Then, in our darkness within the

darkness, we are suddenly found

by that which we no longer seek.

- ã don brennan Tao Ch. 1

BARBARIA CHAPTER NINE

2010-01-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER NINE

Sometimes Friar Mark imagined himself as Satan’s spy, carrying on a tradition of those who do The Master’s secret work inside the fortress of the enemy. He had learned over the years that the perfect Anti-Christ is one who is able to imitate Christ most perfectly while engaging in sin most perfectly. It seemed as though he had been born to diabolical espionage, having been delivered from womb to wet nurse on the very day of his birth, inside the fortress of God, then handed over for the ensuing decade, to … His thoughts were interrupted by the angelic voice of a child who had been running, and was slightly out of breath.

“Father Abbot Joseph wishes to see you in his chambers at once. He wants you to come to his office right now.” The messenger was a tall, pale lad with clean hair that fell below his ears, neatly trimmed to just that length.

The friar tossed his cowl up over his head, turned his back on the boy, and knelt before the shrine of St. Anthony, whose rough hewn oaken statue bore in its arms the baby, Jesus, painted blue and pink. Today the man had been feeling a dreadful abandonment, as though the Prince of Darkness had no more use for the services of an aging spy who had become a bungler. The girl had over stimulated him, gotten him too excited, so that he had behaved rashly, and had not taken the steps necessary to gain control over her will.

The boy left the church door standing open. He was terrified of the old laundryman. His sister had warned him about this evil monk on the night before she ran away.

Slanting winter sunlight fluttered above the man at prayer. Tallow candles sent wisps of black smoke above his bowed head to curl about the face of an infant god, not yet crucified, looking down with untroubled eyes from the arms of a protector.

The Abbot’s messenger stood at attention, remaining silent, but prepared to turn and run, feeling that he was being tested. Someday he would be an army officer. He must learn when to stand his ground, when to charge into battle, and when to retreat with honor. Men like this surly cleric might be dangerous, but he must learn from them. He must be disciplined and watchful.

“What does he want with me?” In all of his 42 years on the premises, the friar had never before been singled out for an emergency call to the office of the Abbot. “This is my hour of silent prayer. Why does His Eminence call me away from my private moment with The Almighty?”

The boy did not respond to these questions. He had learned to keep his duties at the orphanage clearly in focus, and to perform them well, like a good soldier. His only duty, here, was to deliver the message, and he had done so. The Abbot himself had recognized the youngster’s conscientious efforts, and had rewarded him. Weeks before his sister had gone missing. Young Frank Collins had begun his training as personal valet to Father Abbot Joseph. When questioned about Frances, a half a year ago, Frank had told the old priest what he dared, but did not mention the friar.

“She was afraid of the vat of lye, Father Abbot. She said that someone was going to throw her into the boiling lye, and kill her.”

Father Joseph had gone directly to the laundry that day and spoken to Friar Mark, without mentioning what the boy had said.

“Did the girl seem frightened, at all? Did she behave strangely?” the priest had asked the laundryman.

“She was afraid of the vat of lye, Father. Just yesterday. She would not take the stairs to the top of the vat. I told her that she must do so, that it was her sacred duty to do so, and that the Holy Mother of God would always protect a child who performed her sacred duty with a glad heart. And now, it seems, she has run away.”

Father Abbot had apparently been satisfied with Friar Mark’s explanation. Young Frank was told by the Abbot never to speak of the matter again, and to ask God to put his sister’s words out of his mind, and to pray very hard for the salvation of her immortal soul until the day that she would be found. The boy had done as he was told. He had prayed for Frances’ immortal soul, and for her safe return by Christmas. But Christmas had come and gone, now, and Frances was still missing.

“What does His Eminence want with a poor little brother of St. Francis, that he would call a sinner away from his private moment with the Almighty?” The friar moaned as he spoke.

The youngster at the door shuddered with fear at the sound, but remained still. It was difficult. Even though he prayed for her every day, Frank tried hard not to think about Frances - not to think of the terror in her eyes and the dreaded sobbing in her voice as she pleaded with him that October night.

“Fetch our brother. Fetch Terrance from his bed. We must run from here tonight! The Devil himself is in the laundry, Frank. Friar Mark is going to kill us all. He’s going to throw us all into the boiling vat. He’s big and strong, Frank. We can’t stop him.”

Frank hadn’t told the Abbot that part of the story.

Lazarus O’Brian had been a guest of honor at the San Fernando Mission for several days prior to Friar Mark’s summons to the office of his superior. O’Brian was received with honor because he had written ahead to Father Abbot Joseph, expressing an intention to donate a substantial sum to the Mission’s building fund.

Lazarus had also expressed a special interest in the missing Collins girl, explaining that he had been a long time friend of her family, and had confidential information concerning the child’s fate. Lazarus emphasized the confidentiality of his information, and asked that he be allowed to relay it to Father Joseph personally, in the sanctity of the confessional. He included in his letter, two signed statements of personal reference, one from the California State Secretary of Commerce, and one from the Bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento.

Lazarus’ confession took place in the Abbot’s chambers, where the penitent knelt upon a rough braided carpet that caused his knees to ache. The confessor sat in a chair beside the man, facing opposite so that their eyes did not meet, for this conversation was not among men, but between a mortal soul and God. The priest’s presence was necessary only as a divine instrument of absolution.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” said Lazarus, “I have secret information about a missing child, and I have intentionally withheld the facts from the proper authorities.”

“Yes, my son. Go on. Is the child dead? Has she been murdered?”

“No, Father. She is safe. She is in my home. We have concealed her true identity, and adopted her as our daughter, giving her the name of O’Brian. That has been my grievous sin, Father. I have been deceitful, and committed the mortal sin of ‘bearing false witness.’

“If you kidnapped the child, my son, the sin has been much more grievous. Why would a man of your stature do such a thing?”

“There has been no kidnapping, Father. She ran away from your orphanage, and my men found her, nearly dead at the side of the road. They brought her to me, and my sisters and brothers and I have nursed her back to sound health.”

“But why did you not contact the authorities? Why have you, ah, borne false witness, as you say, these many months?”

“That is the terrible part of the story, Father. Indeed, what I must tell you now is unspeakable, and must not to be revealed to the ears of the profane. The truth must remain here, Father, uttered in the presence of the Almighty, in the sanctity of His holy sacrament of confession.”

“Of course, my son. What is this evil of which you speak?”

“His name is Friar Mark …”

Lazarus began to tell a story which Jorge and Raphael had pieced together from the reluctant and intermittent narrative of Frances. The penitent’s knees were in pain and his legs trembled as he spoke. He asked to be allowed to continue the awful tale from a sitting position.

“Yes, of course, My son,” said Father Joseph, and they took an intermission to arrange another chair beside the abbot’s, facing away like a love seat in the French style. Because of priestly protocol, Joseph was the father and Lazarus the son, but both men were well over fifty. Unlike the imposter, Lazarus, whose was of Castilian and Norwegian heritage, the priest was a genuine Irishman, come from County Cork to Boston as an infant. His eyes were the gray color of his hair, and the skin of his hands and face heavily freckled by years of sunburn.

“Ah, thank you, sir,” said Lazarus, easing into his chair and looking out the only window in the sparse room. The bare limb of a cherry tree caressed the glass. He could see the early buds of leaves and flowers. “Before long, Father, your window will be filled with cherry blossoms.”

The priest did not answer. His silence was an admonishment - a reminder to the penitent that he was still engaged in sacramental confession, which did not permit frivolous conversation.

Lazarus took the hint, and cleared his throat. He would have liked a drink of water, but did not ask.

“You have made a serious accusation,” said the priest, “against Friar Mark who supervises work in our laundry. Please continue.”

“Yes, the accusation is quite serious,” Lazarus agreed, “but it is not mine. It is the testimony of a child that I am revealing to you as the basis for my sin of false witness. I feel that I must say as well, that I have come to love the girl as a daughter, and that I believe her testimony to be true.”

“Yes. Go on, then.”

“She claims that this man, Friar Mark, tied a live, newborn rabbit … a wee, hairless bunny, she called it … on the end of a length of string, and dangled it over a vat of hot lye-water. She has described this event in great detail.”

“Yes, I’m sure. I must take a moment, my son, to give you some, shall we say, historical facts concerning our laundry and its vat of lye. Unfortunately, the facts are of a tragic nature,” The priest’s voice was somber. “Three children have fallen into that vat over the years. One has died, and the others were both terribly disabled and disfigured by the caustic chemicals. The laundry work entails a certain amount of risk, you see, and it is Friar Mark’s responsibility to impress that fact upon the children. This business with the rabbit is no doubt one of the methods which he employs to make that impression, you see?”

All that Lazarus could see in his mind as the priest spoke, was an image of Frances drowning in the vat. “Yes, I do see, Father. Please hear the rest. I have yet to tell the ‘unspeakable’ part of the child’s story.”

The priest’s voice softened. “Ah, my son, a confessor soon learns to listen with patience and tolerance to the most sordid of tales. Please go on.

“I shall attempt, Father, in the interest of objectivity, to put what I am about to say in the child’s own words, as they were uttered by her with evident fear and reluctance. But before I do so, Father,” Lazarus asked, “may I please have a drink of water?”

The priest reminded the penitent that this was not a time for self-indulgence, and that he should humble himself before God by practicing self-denial, but to go ahead and take a small sip of water. Lazarus went to the sideboard and sipped discreetly, noticing that the priest was watching him in a mirror on the far wall. He returned to his seat and resumed his confession.

“She said that Friar Mark is a very strong man. Of course, she is just a little girl, so even a man of moderate strength might seem very powerful to her,” Lazarus was timid about describing the sexual assault, and felt himself procrastinating. He wanted to simply rise and leave the room. He was prepared to pay this priest a lot of money to leave Frances alone. Perhaps this confessional charade was unnecessary. But the matter was delicate. He and his brothers wanted to bring the damned laundryman to justice, but they wanted the police left out of it. The matter was indeed delicate. They needed Father Abbot Joseph’s cooperation.

Lazarus continued, “She said that he held her by the neck with one hand, and rubbed her hard between her legs, under her dress, in the place where she goes wee-wee. Those were her words, Father. ‘He held me by my neck and rubbed me hard under my dress in the place where I go wee-wee.’ Those were her words, and there is more.” Lazarus leaned back in his chair, heaved a sigh, and risked a sidelong glance at the priest. The Irishman’s ear was bright red. He was blushing.

“Then, she said he forced her hand under his habit. She said he had a ‘great long wee-wee’ under there, and that he held her hand in his, rubbing the great long thing until he made peculiar noises from his lips, and her arm became wet. She thought he had urinated on her. ‘Peed’ was the term she used to describe it.”

Both men were silent for a while, then Lazarus said, “There’s more, Father.”

“Go on!” The priest’s tone was sharp. He did not call Lazarus his son.

“Friar Mark told the child that if she said anything to anyone about what had just taken place, he would throw her and both of her brothers into the vat, to suffer the same fate as the wee hairless bunny.”

Lazarus O’Brian finished his confession and received absolution for his sin of false witness, then the men sat across from one another at Father Joseph’s desk for a business meeting. Lazarus felt a familiar sense of calm that follows in the wake of confession. He made a mental note to discuss the psychology of confession with Jorge at the next opportunity. These priests all believed that their power over the minds of the faithful came from God, but Lazarus believed otherwise. The power of Augustinian psychology was the thing. The architects of ritual learned from that old reprobate how to control the emotions of the multitude.

Father Joseph was shaken. His ears were still red, as were his nose and cheeks. He did not wear the tonsure, so his head was covered with thick gray hair. Otherwise the old man’s dome would be glowing like a campfire, thought Lazarus. Ah, well. He and his brothers were putting up enough money to ease the priest’s mind. Money does for the shepherd what confession does for the flock. Lazarus smiled at the thought, and wondered what Jorge would have to say about that.

“You realize, Mr. O’Brian, that these matters are both grave and delicate. We must be circumspect to a degree. We must proceed with caution and discretion.”

“Of course,” agreed Lazarus, “That is why I have raised certain facts of the case in my confession, prior to our discussion of more practical concerns. So that we may be circumspect, but at the same time … I believe that now we can exclude any involvement of the police and the journalists, and avoid all taint of scandal as we proceed to a congenial resolution of the problems before us.”

The priest’s ears flared momentarily, and without excusing himself, he stood and crossed the room to pour himself a cup of water. Lazarus gazed out the window, deciding what to say next. When Father Joseph returned to his chair, his complexion was returning to its pink and healthy appearance. The two men talked for over an hour, and Lazarus, in the end, produced some documents for signatures. Then Lazarus retired to his room, and the abbot sent young Frank Collins to summon Friar Mark.

BARBARIA Installment 8

2009-12-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

There were only 20 white people in Chowchilla, including 4 women, 10 children, and Engles. The telegraph key was at the store where Angelita had found the handbill with Frances’ picture. The man who tended the store sent the marshal’s message, and was then questioned about organizing a rescue party for the kidnapped agents.

“Do you speak Spanish, Marshal Engles?” the storekeeper said.

“Of course not. I come from New York, not Spain. If you want my opinion, they ought to make that foreign tongue illegal in …”

The storekeeper didn’t want the Marshal’s opinion, and interrupted, “Them two old boys you arrested were about the only white folks in town who could speak it, you know?” The man suddenly began to laugh. He was standing in front of a high table that served as the store’s counter, unpacking a shipment of short handled hoes from a wooden box.

“What the hell!” snapped Engles.

“Oh, no offence, sir,” the store man recovered his composure, “I was just thinking that the best folks to help you get up a posse around here is the boys you’re trying to catch, you see?”

“Are there any other white men in this place besides you? Anyone with some influence? Who owns that big brick place?”

“That would be my boss, Mr. Munch. Short fella. Wears coveralls and big riding boots with the pants tucked in. Makes him feel taller, I guess.”

“And where would I be likely to find Mr. Munch at this hour?”

“Well, it’s daylight, so he’ll be out in the fields somewhere, working. Probably plowing, over by the creek, there.” The storekeeper waved a hoe in a southerly direction. He was holding it by its sturdy hardwood handle.

“I’ll need a horse.”

“Yeah, I suppose you will. Too far to walk, really, unless you have a whole lot of time on your hands.”

“What the hell’s your name, anyway?” Engles’ was getting red in the face. He was a federal police officer, entitled to respect and obedience on the part of the civilian population he was sworn to serve and protect. He was also exhausted, having just walked over ten miles through the god-forsaken California prairie. He had been humiliated by his captives (He could hear their laughter, as he ran from them), abandoned by his own horse, and could have been killed.

For two hours as he stumbled toward town, as fast as he could move, Engles had expected at any moment to be ridden down and slaughtered in his tracks. His agents may well have been murdered already, and if that were so, it was not going to benefit his reputation in Sacramento. He had lost his patience with this store-tending bumpkin and his sly, derisive comments.

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” said the man, to whom the concept of a direct answer seemed to have no meaning, “there’s been some confusion about that over the years. Now my Mama, she …”

Engles’ arms, especially his forearms and grip, were quite powerful. He grabbed the man by the shirtfront and pushed him backwards over the top of the counter, causing the fellow’s head to ring sharply against the wood, and sending brand new short handled hoes clattering to the floor. One or two of these implements remained beneath the unfortunate storekeeper’s back, serving as a fulcrum, so that the blow to his head was extraordinary, due to leverage action.

The store man, whom everyone called ‘Keep’, because no one ever got a straight answer to the question of his name, also had very powerful forearms and grip. He was holding tight to one of the unpacked tools at the moment of Engles’s surprise assault, and when Keep brought his knee sharply up against the blade of the instrument, the sturdy hardwood handle was forced, with leverage, into the marshal’s groin, lifting him off the floor and crushing his testicles.

The pain experienced by Engles in that moment was severe, to say the least. When he had taken hold of Keep’s shirt, rending the fabric and sending buttons in all directions, the marshal had begun to shout, “No! I’ll tell you what!” Engles intention had been to give the fellow a piece of his mind – to put him in his place, and to warn him to saddle a horse immediately, or else.

But after the crushing of the testicles, all the policeman could do was make a muffled cry and collapse among the cultivating tools, to lie in a fetal position, whimpering. And then vomit, and then bury his face in the crook of one arm, with the other clamped between his legs; to gasp for breath and weep like a forlorn child.

The combination of shock and a sharp rap on the back of his head had disabled Keep, so that he could not attend to the needs of the policeman, having similar needs of his own at the moment. There was no one else about, and it remained to be seen, who might recover first. After several minutes of semi consciousness, Keep managed to right himself.

As he sat upon the counter top, dizzy and nauseous, he became aware of the marshal in a heap on the floor. Since the storekeeper had not assaulted the policeman intentionally, and did not even realize that he had done so unintentionally, Keep could not comprehend what his eyes beheld.

When his blurred vision and vertigo diminished, he was able to accept the marshal’s sad condition as fact, and not a phantom of his injured brain. Then the storekeeper became alarmed.

His revitalized imagination suggested that the marshal, while in the act of assaulting Keep, had himself been assaulted from behind. The fugitives, Keep thought, must have followed the policeman to the store and shot him. The man was no doubt at death’s door. But where were the assailants? Still in the store? In the back? Outside?

The man’s instinct to survive overcame his inertia, and stimulated him into action. He must get to his horse and go for help. He launched himself from the counter, over the moaning form of the federal marshal, and out into a gathering summer storm. Thunder was rolling in the distance and rain was beginning to fall in huge, slow drops. He ran around the building, hoping to find his horse, and no desperadoes.

His prayers were answered. He swung open the corral gate, grabbed a halter and rope from the fence, and climbed aboard the animal, bareback.

Six miles away, by the creek, Munch had stopped his plowing and was leading his horse out of the field. Employer and employee met about half way, on a wagon road that was filling with workers heading in, out of the rain.

“Keep!” shouted Munch, “What in the Devil’s name are you doing out here? Why aren’t you at the store? What’s ….”

“Desperadoes, Boss! We got desperadoes!” Keep was riding too fast and waving one arm as he approached. Munch was obliged to veer off to one side to avoid a collision.

“What the …. Calm down, will you? Good Lord!”

Keep was red in the face, sweating, and mud-splattered from galloping his animal in the rain. Without a bit, he had trouble reining in the horse. The bareback animal skidded past Munch, throwing the rider off balance, and dumping him with a sloppy thud in the middle of the road.

“Good Christ!” Munch yelled.

The felled rider hit his head on the ground, suffering his second concussion in the space of a half hour. This proved too much for the storekeeper’s consciousness, which temporarily expired as he strained to mutter, one more time, “Desperadoes …”

Several people came to the man’s aid, and Munch, marching about with his trouser legs tucked into calf-length boots that were now filling with water, supervised the rescue operation. He instructed his workers to put the injured man back on the horse, but they ignored him. One of the rescuers was wearing a serape, which was fashioned into a stretcher, and four men began to carry the dazed Keep in the direction of town.

Munch, believing his store to be under siege by a gang of marauding criminals, mounted his horse and raced for home to get guns and reinforcements.

* * *

Immediately after Keep had fled from the store in fear for his life, leaving Engles to recover as best he could on the floor in front of the counter, several customers came in.

They were Japanese men, who were building the music hall on what was slated to become Chowchilla’s central plaza. One of them, a heavy set man in his forties, was a doctor. As he checked the patient’s vital signs, the men cleared the counter, deposited Engles upon it, and carefully stripped him naked from the waist, rolling his trousers and using them to pillow the injured man’s head.

“He’s in shock; slipping in and out of consciousness from the pain, I imagine. Masaki,” the physician said to a younger man, “Get some laudanum off the shelf back there.”

Engles’ genital area was severely swollen and discolored. His penis, gorged with blood, stood mightily erect.

“He seems to be having pleasant dreams,” joked one of the men.

The doctor wasn’t amused. “Shut up, you idiot, and go back to the site and get my kit. Hurry!”

The man took off in a rush. Masaki, a giant of a fellow and the doctor’s son, had fetched a 6oz. bottle of liquid and began to spoon it into the marshal’s mouth.

“Give him plenty,” said the doctor, “The whole bottle, if you can. The longer he’s out, the better.” He was massaging and probing Engles’ testicles. “Not too fast. Don’t make him choke or cough, if you can help it.”

A group of Mexican customers came in and observed Engles on the counter, having his erection massaged by the Japanese construction worker. Another Japanese, known to the Mexicans as El Chino Grande, was restraining the marshal and spooning liquid between his lips from an easily recognized laudanum bottle. The language barrier made communication difficult between the attending physician and the audience, one of whom shrieked at the sight, and bolted from the premises. The others, less panicked but unsure of what was happening, thought it best to follow his example, and also departed.

“Sir,” said Masaki, “Don’t you think we should cover the man’s genitals?”

The doctor smiled. “Son,” he said, “You’re a good student, and one day you’ll be a fine doctor. But even you will not be able to effectively treat an injury if you cannot use your eyes to see that injury.”

“Yes, of course, I …”

* * *

As Munch galloped his plow horse headlong into town, he saw two men running. At first, a Japanese seemed to be chasing a Mexican down Main Street, but then the Japanese darted into the store, and the Mexican started waving his arms and screaming for Munch to stop. He reined to a halt.

“Boss! Those Japs! They’ve captured that marshal in the store. They’re getting ready to cut his balls off!”

Munch couldn’t understand what the terrified man was saying, but surmised that it something to do with the Japanese guy who had run into the store. There was a small group of Mexicans standing, now, across the street from the store. The boss figured it must be some kind of race riot. He shouted at the man on the ground, then kicked his horse into motion.

“Vamoose! Get Jose! Vamoose!”

There were a number of ‘Joses’ living in Chowchilla, but only one who was Munch’s Mexican foreman, so the worker understood the instruction. He knew that Jose would be at the livery stable, and took off running in that direction, following the boss’s horse, because the stable was located between the store and the brick castle. In spite of the rain, which had become a downpour, and the mud, which was clay, and formed a slippery soup over rock-hard surfaces, it only took Munch and Jose a half hour to organize a well-armed militia of seven men, ready to go into action. They kept close to the north side of Main Street, and advanced in single file toward the besieged store, Jose at the lead, and Munch bringing up the rear, having emptied the water from his riding boots and re-tucked his trouser legs.

Keep had regained consciousness, but was now afflicted by a grievous headache. He and the stretcher party were across the street with a sizable crowd, which had gathered under shelter, to watch the advance of the militia.

Engles was still out cold on the counter, and the condition of his penis would have indicated to the uninformed that he was still experiencing pleasant dreams. The doctor had prepared a poultice and wrapped it against his patient’s lower abdomen. He was now intending to apply an ice pack to the turgid area at the base of the penis, to reduce inflammation and swelling, and to return Engles to a more appropriate flaccidity. Before he and his assistant could initiate that procedure, however, Jose and his men burst through the door.

“Oh,” was all that the doctor said, as a bullet entered his back to the right of his spine, slipped between two ribs, and brought an immediate halt to the pumping of his heart. As the dead doctor pitched forward, he shoved Engles off of the counter. The doctor’s son, Masaki, who was holding the patient’s legs, threw them upwards in reaction to the gunshot, and poor Engles head was driven into the floor like a pile driver, cracking two vertebrae at the base of his skull.

Keep was the only one in town who could work the telegraph key, but his condition rapidly became serious without proper treatment, and he was unable to even speak coherently, let alone send a message on the contraption. Munch, unable to call for official assistance from the outside world, took charge.

“Here’s what you do, Jose.”

The Japanese men who had not been shot were lying on the floor at gunpoint.

“First things first,” Munch said, “Get these Jappo’s down to the jailhouse and tie ‘em up and gag ‘em so they can’t talk to one another. Then take the dead one out to the graveyard and bury him. Don’t worry about no coffin. No time for that, and anyway. They ain’t Christians, you know.”

Jose was feeling bad about killing the man, now that it was obvious that the Japanese weren’t armed. “I thought they had guns, Boss. I wouldn’t have shot the guy …”

“Don’t worry about that,” Munch said, “They assaulted the marshal, there, and had his pants off. The Good Lord only knows what the heathen beasts were up to. Vile creatures. Should never have hired ‘em in the first place.”

Engles remained unconscious on the floor, his private parts still uncovered and erect. Munch, surmising that the herbal poultice was the cause of the man’s hard on, had ordered it to be removed from the marshal’s groin and thrown into the trash. Engles was feverish, now. Sweat soaked his shirt and poured from his face. His body had begun to twitch and shiver. No one bothered to cover him.

“What about the other Japs?” Jose asked, “The ones at the camp?” The men’s families lived in makeshift shelters at the edge of the barrio, east of town.

“That’s the next thing. Round ‘em up and tie ‘em up, same as these boys.”

“The kids too?”

“Of course! Have to do it. We don’t know what they’re plotting. Can’t take any chances with these idolators.”

“Shouldn’t we take the marshal down to your place? Get him into bed? Maybe your wife could tend to him.”

“Good God Almighty! What are you talking about! Look at that thing sticking up there in the air! Good God Almighty, Man! You can’t allow a woman to be around a thing like that!” Munch shook his head in disgust, “Look at that! We’ll just leave him be until he returns to normal. Good Lord!”

“Keep’s feeling real bad, too. Says the marshal attacked him,” Jose said.

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” snapped Munch, “The man’s delirious. Needs to see a proper doctor. So does the marshal. There’s one over in Five Points. Get ‘em over there as soon as you can.”

* * *

It took a week for a government search party to get organized and find the two agents chained to the tree on the prairie. One of them was still alive. After several days, when he had recovered enough to leave his hospital bed in Fresno, he went down the hall to make a personal report to Marshal Engles, who had a private room.

“Marshal? Sir? How are you?”

Engles opened his eyes, but couldn’t speak.

A nurse came into the room and checked her patient’s pulse. “Thrombosis,” she muttered to the agent, “He can’t speak. A blood clot from his broken neck has lodged in his brain.”

“Can he hear? Can he understand?”

“Yes. It seems so. The doctors aren’t sure how much he understands, but he can probably hear you alright. Can’t walk, though, or talk.”

“I’m real sorry, Marshal Engles,” the agent said, “I hope you get better soon. But don’t worry about that Albertson fellow. We’ll catch him. He’s in Houston, Texas, running with some guy named Max. It’s just a matter of time till we catch up with him, Sir. Don’t worry.”

The agent left the hospital and waited on the sidewalk for a cab to the train station, fingering the two hundred dollar coins that nestled in his vest pocket. His name was Harlan Brooks, but folks always called him ‘Fancy’, because of his passion for finely tailored clothing. A cab, driven by a remarkably large Asian man in a tight fitting black suit and wearing a bowler, stopped in front of agent Fancy. The door to the cab flew open and the occupant, a white man nearly as oversized as the Oriental driver, stepped down into the street and smiled at the marshal, holding the door for him. The marshal thanked the man and shouted to the driver to take him to the train station, then climbed in.

To Fancy’s surprise and dismay, the cordial white gentleman climbed in as well, sat across from the marshal, and pulled the door closed. “Sir, my name is Stuart. C. G. Stuart. How do you do?” Chain Gang offered his hand.

“Oh, yes. I’m Brooks. Harlan Brooks. My pleasure. Going to the train station, are you? Thank you for sharing your cab.”

“You’re quite welcome, Marshal.”

Fancy didn’t respond, at first. He watched Stuart’s eyes and waited for an explanation of how this stranger knew he was a federal agent. But the big man just smiled, then reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a soft leather pouch, which he handed to Fancy. The marshal opened the pouch, removed and counted eight $100 bills, and handed the empty pouch back to the stranger.

“Thank you a second time. You’re a hundred short.”

BARBARIA Installment 7

2009-11-27T17:57:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Finding no vigilantes, the posse rode away. The Marshal, still angry and frustrated, didn’t bother to say good bye. After his rude departure, it took Marshal Engles three weeks to get back to Fresno with a court order for the detention of Will and Pappy.

The decomposing bodies of the vigilantes had been found in the Salinas hills, and Engles was determined to interview the drovers in connection with the murders.

Engles had no solid evidence of their involvement, but he had been convinced by Will’s fit of laughter at their initial encounter that the man’s mockery was an indication of guilt. Engles’ superiors in Sacramento did not agree with his suspicions, and ordered him to stay put in Monterey to conduct a local investigation. He did so, and concluded that the victims were thrown to their deaths from a train above the gorge where they were found. Will and Pappy were on such a train, the night the vigilantes went missing . When Engles wired Sacramento with that information, he was informed that the train crew had been interviewed already, and had provided Engles’ suspects with a sound alibi.

In addition, on an unrelated case, the head office sent instructions to the marshal to familiarize himself with the facts of yet another missing person case. A girl had disappeared from a Los Angeles orphanage recently, and may have been the victim of kidnapping. The possibility of either an interstate or an international crime required that the Federal Marshals prepare themselves for involvement in the investigation.

In a fit of anger, Engles stood up from his desk and ripped the telegram to shreds. He loudly cursed the pig-headedness of the Sacramento Bureau. In his rage, he envisioned the uncontrolled hilarity of “Will Allison”, the offensive cattleman, openly mocking a U.S. Marshal in the presence of volunteer deputies, until the deputies themselves had joined in the laughter as well.

The Marshal also recalled, very clearly now, the derisive smirk on the lout’s face when Engles had fallen over backwards, getting down from the wagon of a diseased girl; a brown-skinned girl with delicious looking white legs.

Alabaster white. Delicious. As his rage began to subside, he paced the floor, thinking of the girl, and he felt stirrings of lust. The extraordinary and unexpected contrast had aroused him at the time, and the memory was doing so again. His penis hardened as he conjured up the alluring darkness of the child’s face and arms, and those dangling alabaster legs.

The man stopped pacing and looked down at the bits of torn telegram beneath his feet. The brown and white girl was the missing orphan, of course. He had seen the kidnapping victim with his own eyes on the Chowchilla Road. That laughing buffoon was not only a murderer, but a kidnapper as well. The idiots in Sacramento would have to listen, now. To hell with them. Engles decided not to even ask for permission.

There was no Federal Officer located in Fresno, but Engles had two agents under him in Monterey, who had been sent to assist on the vigilante investigation. He wired the Fresno County Sheriff, and instructed him to get on up to Madera to look for a bunch of Mexicans herding cows for two white men.

By then, of course, most of the Obregon party was already back in Vacaville, except for the Indians, Eli and Felix, who had been frequenting saloons and brothels in the Monterey area for two weeks, conducting their own investigation, and Will and Pappy, who were drinking and gambling with dozens of other transient whites in Madera. At least Will was drinking and gambling. Pappy did neither, and when Will went broke, his friend wouldn’t loan him a nickel. Of course, Will didn’t even ask. He knew what the answer would be.

The Sheriff of Fresno County was not an ambitious man. He did not have the time, and certainly not the inclination, to search the countryside for particular white and Mexican cowboys, when half of the men in the region were either white or Mexican cowboys. So it was with great reluctance that he rode out to the stockyards in a freezing north wind full of dust and the smells of cow dung, and began asking questions and looking at brands. He didn’t even go to Madera, just sent a telegram to a rancher friend up there.

After Will had lost his cattle drive earnings at the card tables, he and Pappy decided to go back to the town of Chowchilla, having learned that a rich farmer there, who lived in a house that looked like a European castle, was seeking to hire bilingual white men to oversee his work force. The pair got jobs supervising Mexicans in the bean fields along the river, and that’s where Engles caught up with them, nearly a month after they had parted company with Jorge and Raphael.

This time Engles had just two men with him, but they were career federal officers, not deputized railroad workers. Engles was certain by now that Will and Pappy were responsible for two crimes: that of the murdered vigilantes, and the kidnapped orphan. He arrested the pair, and put them in irons.

* * *

When William Allison and Horace Mouton first came to California together from Oklahoma, they were young, somewhere in their teens. At least, Will was “somewhere”, because he didn’t really know how old he was, but he was sure he was older than Horace, who did know his own age. Horace was sixteen, and a foot taller than William, and habitually addressed his friend in the diminutive, as “Shorty”, “Kid”, or “Little Willie”. Will Allison didn’t like that, but he allowed Horace his fun, and ordinarily wouldn’t fight him over it. Will would challenge others, however, who attempted to follow his friend’s lead. It soon became a favorite pastime of Horace to start fights, using Will as bait.
“Howdy, my name’s Horace, and this here’s my friend, Shorty.”

“Uh-huh. Glad to know ya, Horace. Shorty.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t call you what?”

“What you just called me.”

“Shorty?”

Then the fight would begin. If it seemed as though Will might take a beating, Horace would step in and rescue him. Either way, Horace would smooth things over among the combatants as they doctored cut lips, facial abrasions and bleeding noses after the battle, by explaining the game to the target, and offering to buy him a drink, which was seldom refused. With bad feelings in abeyance, the question inevitably came up.

“If you’re so damn touchy about your name, why don’t you just fight old Horace here, instead of everybody else in the state?”

“Can’t fight him.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you’d never know by looking, but he’s my Pappy.”

Forty years later, when both men were arrested by Federal Marshal Engles for questioning in connection with the murders of the Monterey vigilantes, and the kidnapping of Frances Hogan, age eleven, from the San Fernando Mission Orphanage, Will was no longer known as Shorty, but Horace was still Pappy.

* * *

“The thing is,” Engles growled at the pair as he circled them, chewing his tobacco and spitting, not on the ground, but directly onto the boots and pant legs of his captors, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

God damned cops always say that, Will said to himself.

The Marshal had the men chained to one another, back to back, against a Live Oak, five miles off the Coalinga – San Luis Road.

God damned cops, Will went on in his mind, Always telling you it ain’t no such thing as a coincidence. What they really mean is, ‘You’re the one we got, so you must be guilty,’ then they beat the shit out of you ‘til you confess. Hell if they don’t!

Engles had invented the interrogation technique of spitting on people, quite by accident. As a young New York City policeman, he used to spit on criminals out of contempt, and also to vent his anger, when they would not confess to crimes of which he was certain they were guilty. Engles had learned that, in many instances, the humiliation of being systematically spat upon had the effect of breaking down the willfulness of the accused, so that when the beatings began, his victims seemed less defiant.

Since he also enjoyed expectorating on people with impunity, for reasons that he did not clearly comprehend, nor had any interest in comprehending, Engles had adopted the practice as something of a signature enforcement technique. His colleagues, for the most part, found his eccentricity enormously entertaining, although few ever joined him in the game. When they bandied about nicknames for him, such as “Old Phlegm” or “Spit ‘em up”, he was pleased, and took the references as good-natured compliments.

“You two boys brought a load of cattle through Monterey on the night those vigilantes disappeared, and their bodies were found in a ravine below the tracks, on the way to San Luis, where you unloaded.” He planted a big one on Pappy’s chest, and continued to walk and talk, “When I came after you, looking for those missing men, who I was thinking were fugitives, you thought that was very, very funny.” He stopped in front of Will and made a direct hit on his throat, so the juice dribbled down under the man’s shirt.

“Then there’s the matter of that white girl in the wagon, fixed up to look like a Mexican” Engles went on, “I want you to tell me all about it, you understand? Tell me all about it, now! I want you to start the talking, Cowboy,” Engles said to Will, “I want you to tell me, first, just what was so funny that day, about being chased down by a US Marshal and his posse?”

Will was too angry to speak, but he was also afraid to die. He believed that a man who would chain up another man and spit down the front of his shirt would also kill the son of a bitch. Will looked Engles in the eye and started to ask the bastard what he was talking about, but didn’t want to get spit on again, so he said, “I was laughing at Pappy’s horse, jumping around like a polecat with a corn cob up her ass. Your deputies were laughing, too, in case you don’t remember. Hell, maybe they killed them vigilantes.”

Engles confronted Pappy again. “That right, Mr. Pappy? Was that old boy laughing about your horse jumping around?”

Pappy grinned and said, “Yeah, well, that was about half of it.”

Engles spit on Pappy twice, once on each shoulder. The Marshal could hit the mark at ten feet. That was probably one of the reasons he liked to spit on people. He was good at it. “Is that right? Well, then, tell me the rest. What was the other half?” Will cringed. He was afraid Pappy was going to say something sarcastic, and get them both killed.

“He was laughing because he was glad you didn’t recognize him,” Pappy said. He continued to grin, but Will kept his mouth closed tight, just in case.

“Recognize him? What the hell are you talking about?” Engles marched back around the tree and took a hard look at Will. “Who the hell is he? Who the hell are you, Mister?”

“That there’s Shorty Allison you’re looking at, Marshal,” shouted Pappy from his side of the tree, “Shorty Allison out of Oklahoma. Robbed the Tulsa First National Bank 6 months ago, then lit out for California with $40,000. Been here ever since, and as far as I can tell, ain’t spent a dime of that money yet.”

The two Deputy Marshals, who had been sitting on some rocks nearby, out of the heat, suddenly stood and walked toward the prisoners. “You mean ‘Albertson’?” one of them said to Pappy, “Tiny Albertson?”

“Holy shit!” said the other.

“Well, maybe. He told me he was Shorty Something-or-other. I like to just call him ‘Shorty’, you know. ‘Shorty for short!’ Ha-ha-ha,” Pappy chuckled at his unappreciated play on words.

“You shut your damned fool mouth,” yelled Will, jerking against his chains.

“Engles!” said one of the deputies, “There’s a nice reward for this hombre. Five or six hundred.”

“Hell, Shorty, you never told me that part,” Pappy said, “By God, Marshal, I ought to get that reward, ain’t I?”

“My name ain’t goddam Shorty, goddammit!” Will was getting more agitated.

“Hell, no, it ain’t,” said the deputy, “It’s Tiny, that’s what. Tiny Albertson.”

“Don’t call me that,” Will fumed at the deputy.

“Don’t call you what? Tiny? Shut your goddam mouth, Tiny!” The deputy, not given to spitting on people, backhanded Will across the face, knocking his head against the tree, causing him to bleed and feel dizzy.

“Well, what about it, boys? Do I get that reward, or don’t I?” Pappy asked.

Engles, who had been silent for several minutes, decided to take charge, again, of the interrogation. “You two,” he addressed the deputies and pointed at Will, “take this sorry fool and chain him up over there behind those rocks, and stay with him. But don’t beat on him. Just stay with him until I call you back. I want to have a little private talk with the other one, about his reward.”

The deputy who had hit Will started to object, “What do you mean, his reward?”

Engles grinned and winked, so the deputy remained silent. He unlocked the chain on Pappy’s left wrist, which loosed Will’s right arm, chain attached. Will immediately swung at the man, and the momentum of the swing wrapped the chain around his neck. Will grabbed the loose end of the chain and lifted up.

Pappy ran around the tree and found himself behind the other deputy, who was attempting to free his partner from Will’s strangle hold. Engles, meanwhile, was back-pedaling in the direction of the horses. Pappy punched the deputy at the base of his skull, knocking him into the tree and stunning him and causing blood to run down his face and onto his shirt. Then he slipped his own chain under the man’s chin, and copied Will’s strangle hold. Engles took off running, then, running toward the horses for a firearm. He stumbled on the way, which frightened Pappy’s horse, who had never liked Engles since the first time they had met. None of the animals were tied, so when one started running, Hell bent, the rest followed. Engles screamed at them to stop, but that just made them run faster for about a half-mile, then they stopped.

“Goddammit, quit choking the son of a bitch,” said Pappy, “ All he did was call you Shorty. Ain’t worth hanging for.”

Will eased up and allowed the man to cough and gasp.

“Look at that spit-crazy bastard,” Will said, “Think he’s going to catch his horse?”

“Naw, I don’t think so. He ain’t very good with horses. And you know how they love to run on a day like this, with the breeze and all.”

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“Dunno.”

“Think he’ll come back over here?”

Pappy laughed loudly, “I know he’s stupid with horses, but I don’t think he’s dumb enough to come around here after all that spitting he done.”

“Well, what the hell. He’s going to have to walk back to Chowchilla, I guess. Ain’t that right?”

“I guess,” Pappy smiled, “You want to hold my man’s neck, here, while I unlock our chains?”

“Right. You want to go get that crazy mare of yours? Think you can catch her before that idiot gets to town? Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

“Shit, I don’t know. Hope so. She ain’t a bad animal, you know. Just playful.”

Pappy bent over to unlock the chains, and Will watched Engles give up on catching his horse, and start moving at a trot in the general direction of town. Then Will turned his eyes in the opposite direction where the horses had gone into a grove of trees to the west.

“Well, I’ll be ….,” said Will, gaping into the distance over Pappy’s shoulder.

Eli and Felix emerged from a grove of trees about a thousand yards away, leading five horses toward them. Before the caravan could draw near, Will waved them off, then he and Pappy chained the deputies to the tree and blindfolded them. Will started to say something, but Pappy put his fingers to his lips, and they walked over to where the new arrivals were holding the horses.

“Did you see that Engles fella?” asked Pappy in a low voice, so the blindfolded agents couldn’t hear.

“Oh, yeah,” whispered Eli, “We been watching him use you boys for a spittoon this morning.”

“Did he see you?” asked Will.

“Naw, We stayed out of sight. The horses found us pretty quick, though.”

Felix said something in Miwok, and Eli translated.

“The Marshal’s saddle bags are full of money and valuables,” said Eli, “That stuff belong to you?”

“It’s all mine,” said Pappy, “This here gambling man is lucky to still have his shirt and pants. He damn near bet his boots on his last hand.”

“Felix thinks we ought to get out of here while the getting’s good,” Eli said.

“Just give me one more minute,” Pappy said, retrieving his belongings from the saddle bags, “I want to have a little talk with those government men over there before we leave.”

Pappy slung a canteen of water over his shoulder, and walked back to where the agents were chained, and stood over them. “Shorty wants me to tell you something,” said Pappy. He placed a hundred dollar gold piece into each man’s hand, and explained what they were. Then he took the coins from their hands an pushed one down into each man’s pocket.

“That’s for keeping your mouths shut,” Pappy said, “Shorty says there’s plenty more where that came from if he don’t get caught. If he’s still on the loose in six months, both you boys will get a thousand dollars each. He knows your names and where you work, so don’t worry about not getting paid, unless he gets caught, of course.”

“What do you want us to tell Engles?” asked the man who had slapped Will, “and who the hell are you?”

“I’m one of the fellas you overheard whispering, ain’t that right?” asked Pappy.

“Yeah,” said the other man, whose face was a bloody mess, “but we couldn’t hear too good.”

“Sure, but you did hear ‘Texas’. And ‘Houston’, you think, and a name,” Pappy went on, “Max, you think. Yeah, that was it. Max, in Houston.” He placed the canteen on the ground next to the men. “There’s water here. Careful you don’t spill it all, trying to drink with those chains on.”

Pappy walked back to the gathering of friends and horses, mulling over what they should do next, now that they were fugitives from justice and all.

Will figured their best chance was to hide out in San Francisco, around the Barbary Coast, “Because they got so damn many criminals hiding there already, nobody’s going to notice two more.”

Pappy didn’t agree. He wanted to go up in the mountains.

“Felix thinks you’re both right,” said Eli. “He says one of you should go to the city, and the other to the mountains. Us two, soon as we get our tracks covered around here, we’re getting back to Vacaville to let Raphael know what’s going on.”

“Tell Raphael I’ll get to that Golden Spike place as soon as I can. Probably take a week or two, ‘cause I’ll be going the long way around,” said Will.

“You’ll be going to your old mining shack, ain’t that right, Pappy?” Eli asked.

“Yeah, that’ll be best for me. Tell ‘em I’m going to cut my hair off and grow a long beard. I’ll stay through fall and be snowed in for the winter, so nobody will hear from me until next March, at least.”

“Don’t suppose you boys could loan a fella a few dollars,” Will said to Eli, making him laugh. Even Felix smiled.

Pappy, who had been checking his horses feet and re-cinching his saddle, climbed on to the animal’s back and began easing away from the others. He called back over his shoulder, “After you loan him the money, get him into a card game. You’ll get it all back in five minutes.”

Eli handed over some bills and coins. Will stuffed the money in his saddlebag and tipped his hat in thanks.

“Guess I’ll be going before the posse gets here. Don’t want to make it too easy on them,” Will said, then cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted in the wind at Pappy’s receding backside, “Take care of yourself, Old Man!”

Pappy raised one arm in the air without turning around.

“He’s my pappy, you know. I don’t like him much, but a man has to make allowances for family, don’t he?”

“Felix says we should get moving. Make time while this wind is up to blow over our tracks,” Eli said, “If we’re lucky, it will start raining hard before the posse comes. He thinks we’re going to be lucky.”

“When the hell does Felix tell you all of this stuff? When the hell you tell Eli all this stuff, Felix? I hardly ever hear you say a damn word.”

The three men rode due west together for a while, then stopped, shook hands and parted company. Will continued west and the other two turned north. The wind soon shifted direction, and began swirling in from the southwest, bearing the smell of water and electricity. Thunderheads were stacking up overhead. The fugitives were going to be lucky.

That afternoon, the Office of the United States Federal Marshal in Sacramento received a telegram from Chowchilla:

OKLAHOMA BANK FUGITIVE TINY ALBERTSON INVOLVED WITH VIGILANTE MURDERS AND ORPHAN KIDNAPPING STOP ACCOMPLICE PAPPY STONE STOP BOTH ESCAPED FROM CUSTODY STOP HOLDING TWO OFFICERS HOSTAGE STOP NO MEN FOR POSSE HERE STOP ONLY MEXICANS STOP SEND MORE AGENTS STOP

BARBARIA Installment 6

2009-11-19T09:36:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER SIX

The conductor roused Will Dexter, who was stiff from trying to sleep in his cramped second-class seat. Pappy Mouton was still snoring across the aisle. The sky was streaked with color as the rising sun elbowed its way through the clouds.

“Wake up, Pap. Time to get to work.”

Mouton kept snoring, and Will had to reach over and shake him by the foot. The train was slowing down as the men pulled on their boots and hauled their packs down from overhead. They were a half-mile out of the station when the cars groaned to a full stop. Back in the cattle car, Raphael eased open the door and took a peek. When he saw Will and Pappy coming toward him along side the train, he hopped out and walked up to meet them.

“Mornin’, Boys.”

“Whew!” said Will. He spat on the ground. “Next time I’m ridin’ back with you and the horses where a man can stretch out in the straw and get some sleep.”

“The conductor say anything to you this morning?” Raphael asked.

“Said if we wanna unload our cattle, to get our asses moving,” said Pappy, stopping to urinate. “Says we got fifteen minutes while the engine takes on water, and to be sure the ramps are put back and the cars closed up.”

“O.K. Start unloading and saddle up. We’re going to drive ’em east a few miles, then I’ll come back with one of you boys to look for my brother.”

“How come?’ said Will. “Can’t we just hold the cattle around here for a while?”

“We had a little trouble in Monterey last night,” Raphael answered. “I was expecting we’d get stopped by the cops here.”

“What kind of trouble?” asked Pappy.

“I’ll tell you later. It’s best if you don’t know now, anyway, in case the cops do show up. Remember, you’re the bosses, and you don’t know anything.” Raphael grabbed the ladder rungs on the side of the car and started climbing up. “I’m going to sit up top and keep a look out.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Will, remembering. “There’s a man up there looking back. Wave both your arms over your head when we’re unloaded and the train can start movin’. Conductor told me to do that. The guy up there will wave his arms to answer you. Damn. Almost forgot.”

Felix and the others had their car open and the stock ramp down. They led out the horses first. Will and Pappy put saddles and bridles on their animals, then all the riders backed off into a wide circle while Gyp untied the panel that held the cattle, and dragged it out of the way. The gentler animals sniffed the ramp and began to step down. The wilder ones hugged the rear wall of the car. When the lead animals decided to move, the wild ones rushed past them into the open field beside the tracks. The herders backed off, waving their arms slowly and talking, to calm those who were in panic. The calmer animals began to pull great mouthfuls of grass from the pasture. Gyp climbed down slowly and urged the feeding cattle away from the tracks, then went to the next car and unloaded there. Ely eased his horse around between the herd and the train, while Gyp closed the car doors and hauled the ramps back up. Ignatio was holding Gyp’s horse, and he walked over to retrieve the animal. Just as Gyp mounted, Raphael called out from on top of the car.

“Somebody’s coming. One rider on the right. Go ahead and move the herd away.” He waved his arms to the spotter on the lead car, and got a response. Then Raphael climbed down and walked over to where Will was holding his horse. He mounted and told Will to come with him. As the rest of the crew herded the cattle away from the train, Raphael and Will trotted their horses to the last car, and went around to meet whomever was coming from the station down the other side of the tracks.

“We gonna have to shoot this guy?” said Will, grinning.

“Christ, I hope not.” Raphael answered. The rider was coming at a slow trot. The pair stopped their advance and waited.

“Sheeit,” Raphael said, turning to Will with a broad smile. “It’s my damn brother.” He urged his horse ahead and rode up to meet Jorge.

The twins shook hands, and Raphael chided Jorge about staying out of trouble in the future. Will rode up and was introduced. Jorge explained that his group was east of town at a campsite just off the wagon road to Chowchilla.

“Lazaro explained in his wire that we’d be going in that direction,” Jorge said, “so we set up camp yesterday.”

“OK,” said Raphael, “Let’s get out of here and not press our luck.” The train whistle blew and the cars started moving forward. The three men waited until their path was clear, then crossed the tracks and caught up with the herd. They made their way to the Chowchilla road, and were at Jorge’s camp by early afternoon.

There were two tents and a few lean-to shelters set up on a bluff above a river that curved away to the east. Ely, Felix, Pappy and Will elected to make camp with the cattle on the river bank, and the rest followed the trail along the bluff to ride up the hill to meet Jorge’s crew. He was trying to explain to his brother the reason for not taking the train from Los Angeles. He dug the news clipping about Frances from his vest pocket and handed it to Raphael, who stopped his horse to read.

“So you walked all the way here from Los Angeles with a couple of pack mules, carrying a runaway white girl on a stretcher?”

“Yeah. That’s what we decided.”

“You’re as crazy as this Miwok bunch,” Raphael said. He had already told Jorge, Will and Pappy the story of the dead vigilantes. “By rights, the lot of us ought to be swinging by our necks.”

Jorge smiled in agreement. “Actually, it was one of the women, Angelita, who made us do it. Told her husband that if he left the girl, he’d have to leave his wife too.”

“Hell, Brother. Who’s the boss of this crew? You or Angelita?”

“Who’s the boss of yours?” Jorge retorted, “What’s his name? Felix?”

When they rode into camp, cooking smells temporarily ended all conversation except introductions. Gyp and Ignatio packed a pot of meat and beans and a stack of tortillas into a sack, and rode down the trail to the river. In between bites and swallows, Raphael attempted to outline his plans to the others for the cattle drive across the valley. However, as the children overcame their initial shyness before the new arrival, it was too difficult to discuss serious matters over their chatter and laughter. They were fascinated by the identical appearance of the newcomer with Jorge, and began to gather around with innumerable questions and comments.

Raphael discontinued his lecture. He was about to ask the whereabouts of the white girl, when Angelita emerged from one of the tents, carrying the girl in her arms, wrapped in a blanket. The other children moved aside to make a path as the woman carried Frances to the edge of the cooking fire and set her on the ground in front of the twins. Her skin had been darkened with petroleum ointment, and her eyes were wide and fearful. Jorge, who had been the only one to speak English to the child since she had regained consciousness, had barely begun to gain her trust. She was still weak, and Angelita squatted with her arms around the girl, propping Frances up from behind. Three of the other children scrunched up around her as well, so she wouldn’t topple over.

Jorge smiled at Frances and asked if she was feeling better. Her sense of alarm seemed to ease, and she nodded her head. Then she began to glance back and forth at the faces of the twins with a puzzled look, causing the rest of the children to laugh and start up again with their chatter. They all began at once to explain Raphael to Frances, who understood very little of what they were saying. Jorge held forth his hand. After a few seconds, the girl’s arm squirmed out of the folds of the blanket, and she took the man’s hand in her own.

A huge grinned spread across his face. Frances had shied away from Jorge’s touch until now. Angelita raised her eyes to Heaven in a silent prayer of gratitude. The girl had not uttered a word since they had found her, except in the delirium of her nightmares. Everyone was hoping she would soon begin to talk to Jorge.

“This man who looks like me,” Jorge said, “is my brother. My twin brother. His name is Raphael.”

Raphael’s expression was blank. He stood and circled around to the fire to pour a cup of coffee. Frances craned her neck and followed him with her eyes. She turned back to Jorge.

To Angelita’s delight, and in answer to her prayer, Frances spoke, “Mother has sent two of you.” Her voice was raspy from lack of use, but loud enough so that everyone near her could hear. She smiled slightly, and a new calm filled her eyes. She relaxed into the arms of Angelita, and dropped Jorge’s hand.

“She spoke! She spoke!” Angelita exclaimed, then asked, “What did she say?”

“She said her mother has sent two of us. I think she means Raphael and me.” Jorge said.

“She has been dreaming of her mother,” said Camilla, Angelita’s fifteen-year-old daughter. “She has been saying ‘Mama’ a lot in her sleep.”

Almost at once, Frances drifted off to sleep in Angelita’s arms. Everyone became quiet and watched the child.

“She has gone to tell her mother the news,” Camilla said.

Angelita carried the girl back to the tent, and Raphael walked to the edge of the bluff to sip his coffee and study the enormous valley. A north wind had cleared the sky of clouds, and he could see the tips of the Sierra Nevada in the distance.

Jorge followed Angelita to the tent to discuss Frances’ progress, then walked out to the cliff’s edge to join his brother. Jorge chuckled. “Well, Mi Hermano, how does it feel to be a guardian angel?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Raphael snapped.

“Well, when you think about it, I guess that answers the question, eh?”

“What question is that?” Raphael grumbled.

“What you said before, About why we aren’t hanging from a couple of oak trees.”

“Oh yeah? And why is that?”

“We’ve been getting protection from the spirit world,” Jorge smiled and sipped at his coffee. “Apparently the kid’s departed mother has sent us on a mission.”

“Is that the kind of shit they taught you at Cambridge?” Raphael spat over the cliff.

“No. I just learned that from Angelita,” Jorge said. “Couldn’t wait to let you in on it.”

“Well, you tell Angelita to break camp now. We’re getting the hell out of here before a god damned posse shows up.”

“No, I don’t think she’ll agree to that. She says Frances is sleeping soundly for the first time in two weeks. Even when she was unconscious, the kid was jerking around and babbling all the time. Angelita’s not going to wake her up.”

“For Christ sake, Jorge! I’m telling you to break camp now. We’re moving out.” Raphael glared at Jorge, who turned and walked back toward the cooking fires.

After a few steps he stopped and turned, still smiling. “You can discuss it with her if you like,” Jorge said, “but I don’t think she’ll agree. I think she’ll tell you that we can leave when the white girl wakes up.”

Raphael began to pace back and forth at the bluff’s edge, cursing. Jorge watched for a few seconds, then went to take a nap himself.

The next morning at dawn the camp was dismantled and Jorge’s two pack mules were loaded. He had acquired a wagon and horses at San Luis. As the party made its way down the bluff trail, a storm was gathering to the west. But to the east, where they were headed, the sky was clear and the outline of the mountain peaks was sharp against a red horizon. They rode directly away from the dark skies, in the direction of the mountains.

After a couple of hours Ignatio spotted a dust cloud behind them. Whoever was raising the dust was coming fast. Will and Pappy dropped back to take up the rear of the drive and do the talking. Raphael and Jorge moved ahead among the other men, who urged the cattle along at a steady pace. The men checked their weapons in preparation for the worst. Esteban and Rogelio each carried shotguns, and walked their horses along beside the wagon.

There were five in the approaching party. Engels was a federal marshal, assigned to Monterey county. He wore a dark suit with a long, dirt-streaked coat and a stocking cap that covered his bald head and his ears. The others were railroad workers from San Luis who had been pressed into service as temporary deputies. A cold north wind whipped around them, waving the tails of Engels’ coat like a flag as he pulled to a stop, spooking Pappy’s horse.

“I’m glad I caught up with you boys,” Engels said. “Been riding most of the night.”

“You been riding all night to catch us? What the hell,” Will said, “You wanna buy our cattle, or something?”

Pappy’s horse was now hopping around in the sagebrush like a demented rabbit, trying to shake the man out of the saddle. The deputies were laughing at the beast’s antics. One of them commented that Pappy’s mount must have horseshit instead of brains in its head.

“Nah,” said Engles, “this ain’t about cattle. You do have papers on them brands, though, I expect.”

Will took offense. “Whatta you care about the brands on my stock? Who the hell are you, Mister?”

“I’m a Federal Marshal from Monterey County, and these boys here are duly deputized. We need to ask you some questions.”

“That conductor on the train already seen my brand papers. Why didn’t you talk to him?”

“Well, this ain’t about the cattle, I said. Anyway, that train was long gone, and the conductor with it, before I got down there to San Luis yesterday evening.”

Pappy’s animal finally settled down, but wouldn’t come anywhere near Engles. The temporary deputies all dismounted and started stretching, spitting, urinating, and rolling cigarettes.

“Go on and stop your drive, now. Gotta talk to y’all. Hold that wagon and bring all those drovers on back here." Engles said.

“Shit!” said Will. “You ride all night to come out here and spook our horses, now you want us to let our cattle wander all over the goddam desert while we talk to you? Whose gonna round ‘em up after you’re done talking?”

“Just calm yourself down,” Engles said.
“Lemme see your damn papers,” Will answered. “How do I know you ain’t some wild bunch come out here to steal our stock?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Engles bristled.

“I’m talking about, if that’s what you’re aiming to do, you better aim again, ‘cause we sure got you outgunned. That’s what I’m talking about!” Will meant what he said. There was no hesitation in his voice. He and Engles eyed one another for a few seconds while the wind howled and the cattle and the wagon kept moving farther into the distance.

Finally, Engles dug into his inside coat pocket and produced a folded document, which he handed to Will, who took a long time, pretending to read very carefully. Meanhile, Pappy kept soothing his horse and walking it in circles, staying well away from the others. Will, who couldn’t read, eventually handed the papers back to Engles and asked him his name.

“Why, I’m Steven J. Engles. Just what it says on the paper,” the man said.

Will decided to become conciliatory. He relaxed his demeanor, smiled and offered his hand. “Glad to know you, Deputy Engles. I’m Will Dexter, and that fella over their on the shit-head horse is Pappy Mouton.”

The deputies on the ground, who had become edgy during the tense exchange between their strange new boss and the even stranger cowboy, visibly relaxed and began to talk among themselves. Engles shook hands and nodded in Pappy’s direction. The “temps” all began shouting their names at once, saying hello.

“What brings you out our way this morning?” Will said with a friendly smile, as though the Central Valley had suddenly and magically become his own personal garden, and Engles had just dropped by for tea.

“I told ya, I gotta ask you some questions!” Engles responded.

“Well hurry it up, for Christ Sake,” Will exclaimed in a jovial tone, “ I’ve got to get these cattle to Madera, and I’m freezing in this wind.”

“We’re lookin’ for some vigilantes.” Engles voice remained stern and officious. “I have a warrant from the Attorney General in Sacramento to arrest them. We have reason to believe they’ve joined up with your bunch.”

Will’s mouth opened, but he didn’t speak. He stared at the sheriff for a few seconds, then began to laugh. He laughed harder and harder, until he was bent over in his saddle, coughing. Tears flowed down his cheeks and soaked his beard. Because of the wind, Pappy hadn’t been able to hear what Engles had said. He growled at his horse to quit screwing around, and trotted over beside Will.

“What’s the damn joke?” Engles demanded.

Will straightened up and took a deep breath, and tried to tell Pappy, but just started laughing again. Now the temporary deputies were laughing as well, although they hadn’t been able to hear either.

Engles wasn’t amused. He shouted at Pappy. “Are you fellas hidin’ three vigilantes in that wagon, or not? Are they up there, drivin’ your cattle?”

Pappy, although grasping the humor of the situation, remained calm and smiled. “Vigilantes, you say? Three of ‘em? Ah, what do these fellas look like, these vigilantes?”

Will gave up trying to control himself, and rode off to catch up with the wagon.

Engles continued speaking to Pappy. “Two of ‘em about your age. One younger man. Dooley, is his name. The two old boys are Smith and Kramer. I know ‘em all by sight. Been knowin’ ‘em a long time. Now…”

Pappy gave a congenial nod, and interrupted. “Yes, sir. C’mon, now. Follow along slow so’s ye won’t stampede the herd or scare the children. Come along and look for your vigilantes.”

Pappy turned his horse and began a slow trot after Will. Engles followed him, and the San Luis deputies mounted and brought up the rear.

BARBARIA installment 5

2009-11-08T09:18:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Raphael Obregon pulled his two-horse surrey to the curb in front of The Golden Spike on Pacific Street. Eleven-year-old Jewett Andaluce was riding with him up front, and hopped to the ground and began to unbridle. It was almost noon, and the street was crowded with vehicles, livestock and people coming and going in all directions. The sky was clear, and an icy breeze out of the north was embracing the streets of the Barbary Coast.

“Keep an eye on things, all right?” Raphael said. The boy nodded vigorously, and patted the neck of the curbside horse.

“You know what to do, now, eh?” Raphael asked. “I’m going to have ’em bring you something to eat and drink. Just stay with the horses and look after things, O.K?”

Jewett smiled. His face was animated and he kept patting the horse’s neck, but didn’t speak.

“This might take an hour or so. That’s a long time to wait. Think you can do that?” Again, an energetic nodding of the head. The man laughed and walked into the Saloon.

The lights were dim compared to the bright sunshine on the street. Men sat at cloth covered tables, eating, drinking, and talking. There were a few informal card games going on, but the gaming wheels and dice tables weren’t operating yet. A dozen women in short satin skirts and net stockings were scattered about the room, mingling with the customers. One of the women came around from behind the bar and hooked her arm in Raphael’s.

“Hello, Salina,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

“What’s this I hear about you leaving today?” she said. She wore the required abundance of rouge on her full cheeks and lips. Her brown hair was lightly oiled and styled about her face in ringlets.

“Yeah, I have to go on a trip. Just found out. Too bad, huh?”

“Yeah, too damn bad for me. I was countin’ on making some more cash off of you tonight.” She reached up and stuck her finger in his ear.

Raphael slid two dollars in silver from his vest pocket and handed it to her. “Here, that ought to ease your pain. Get my boy out front something to eat, O.K? And kind of keep an eye on him for me. He’s not used to this big city life, you know?”

“Oooh. For two bucks, I’ll be his mama and his grandma. What’s his name again? Jew Boy?”

“Nah, just Jew. Short for Jewett. I’ll be upstairs talking to my brother. You seen him this morning?”

“Yeah, he was here a while ago. Said hello. He’s probably up there in Fairyland, having one of his friends for lunch. You sure you want to go up there. Some of those old boys would really like to taste what you got.” She whooped with laughter and reached down and squeezed Raphael’s penis for emphasis. He goosed her, and made his way through the kitchen to the back stairs.

The Golden Spike took up the first two stories of the building on Pacific and Green. The two upper floors comprised The Adonis, a dance and gambling club reserved for special clientele, who were, for the most part, homosexual men. Lazarus O’Brian, a long time friend of the owner, kept a private room at The Adonis, fourth floor, rear.

Raphael mounted the stairs slowly. He’d had a late night, and wasn’t feeling very well. He checked the lounge and restaurant on the third floor, and was relieved to see Lazaro at a window table, eating alone. The décor was more luxurious and sedate than in the gaudy saloon downstairs, and the curtains were open onto Pacific Avenue, flooding the room with daylight. Several men greeted Raphael and shook his hand as he made his way across the room.

Lazaro stood and embraced his youthful brother. Raphael wasn’t hungry. He ordered a whiskey and a pot of tea with milk.

“Salina gave me your letter last night. Sounds like Jorge’s bit off more than he can chew.”

“Oh, I think he’ll be all right. He’s bringing some workers up from Jalisco, and the railroad station agent in Los Angeles wasn’t cooperative.”

“How many people he got with him?”

“There’s twenty altogether. They had nineteen, then picked up one more in Los Angeles.”

“All men?” Raphael sipped his whiskey and tea in turn.

“No. Just twelve. The rest are women and kids.”

“Where are they now?”

“On their way up the coast to San Luis Obispo. I’ve arranged for train transport from there. But there’s another problem.”

“Monterey?”

Lazaro laughed. “You’re surprisingly well informed for a bandido, Little Brother.”

“Yeah, us outlaws need to pay attention. That vigilant bunch down there has been good for my business. Got Chinese and Mexican whores pouring into town these days, looking for shelter.”

“Well, they’ve taken to stopping trains, now. Looking for Chinese to hang.”

Raphael gulped the last of his drinks and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What do you want me to do?”

Lazaro shook his head. “I’m not sure. Maybe meet him at San Luis and give him an escort across the valley to Fresno? I just don’t want him trying to take that train through Monterey. That mob’s blood is up, and all the law enforcement agencies want to do is avoid confrontation.”

“He don’t have any Chinos with him does he?”

“No, but they’ve been attacking anyone that ain’t white. An uppity negro could really set them off, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, Hermano, I know,” Raphael said. “Any excuse to lynch a negro. Especially one that talks like a white college professor.”

“So, what do you think?”

“Does the Railroad have a spur line east out of San Luis?”

“No. Nothing cuts across until you get north of Monterey to Pacheco Pass.”

“That fuss in Monterey. It’s about dock work, right?”

“Yeah. The beet farmers fired all the Chinese field workers, bringing in Mexicans. So the Chinos went looking for work on the docks, and fishing. That’s white work down there, same as here. A vigilance committee started up a couple of weeks ago, raising Hell.”

“Trouble is,” said Raphael, “if I try to take some men down to San Luis, we could get lynched on the way. Wouldn’t be much help to Jorge, then.”

“Yeah. I was thinking you could take some white guys with you, for protection.”

“Who? You?”

“No, I can’t. I have to be in Sacramento all week. I was thinking about those Vacaville cowboys. What’re their names?”

“You mean Will Dexter? Him and Pappy?”

“Yeah. Those two. They always seemed like pretty good fellows to me.”

“They’re all right.” Raphael looked around and waved at the waiter for another whiskey and tea. “You mind doin’ a little cattle business this week?”

“What kind of cattle business?” Lazaro raised his eyebrows. “You a rustler now?”

“Hell, no. Folks look out for their pimps and bootleggers, but they like to hang rustlers. I don’t go in for dangerous work, Lazaro,” Raphael laughed, “You know me better than that.”

“What cattle business, then?”

“I’m talking about Will and Pappy. They’d probably go along with us, if there was a cattle deal in it.”

“Sure. That would be OK. What kind of deal?”

“Loan them the money for a couple of carloads of steers at the
Dixon Auction Yard, and ship ’em to San Luis. I’ll take my men and horses in one of the cattle cars, and get Will and Pappy to come along as bosses. Nobody’s going to make a couple of white cowmen unload their cattle to look for Chinamen in the middle of the night.”

“What are you going to do with the steers when you get off the train?”

“I’m thinking we’ll go ahead and drive them across the valley to Fresno. Pappy and Will can sell ‘em for a profit, and pay you back. Why not? We’ll put the women and kids in a wagon. Only thing safer than pimping and bootlegging in California is a Central Valley cattle drive. The law even allows us Indians to carry all the guns we need with no questions asked. Protection from all those imaginary rustlers out there.”

The two men worked out some details, then Raphael finished his drinks and summed up. “So I’ll need to go to Vacaville today to talk to Pappy and Will and the Andaluce boys. If everyone’s willing, we can leave out in a couple of days.”

“I’ll wire my bank in Vacaville, so your cowboy friends can draw the money tomorrow,” said Lazaro, “Anything else you want me to do?”

“Naw, I don’t think so,” said Raphael, thinking out loud, “ We’ll ship at night. It might be raining, so we’ll get us those enclosed stock cars. Ones with drop ramps on one side, so we can unload before we pull into the yards at San Luis. Have ’em panel off part of a car for us Indians and the horses, and put down a thick bed of straw. Late. Close to midnight as possible. Oh, yeah! Don’t forget to wire Jorge in San Luis, and tell him to stay put at the station until we get there.”

“Goddammit, Raphael, listen to you giving orders. That voice. You sound just like Papa.”

The young man didn’t smile. Before Lazaro could say anything else, Raphael pushed his chair back and stood up. He reached across the table and gripped his brother’s shoulder, holding him in his seat.

“I ain’t nothing like him,” he said, then walked away.

* * *

Around eleven P.M., two days later, a freight train pulled out of the Vacaville yard, heading south. Inside the fourth from the last car, which appeared locked from the outside but, on the left side, was not, four men lounged in the dark with Raphael. Ignatio and Gyp Andaluce, Ely Madrone, and Felix Suisun. . Ignatio and Gyp were young Jewett’s older brothers. Eli and Felix were their uncles. Their horses were tied and loosely saddled at the rear of the car, munching from feedbags. There were two extra horses, unsaddled, for Will Dexter and Pappy Mouton, who were riding up ahead in a passenger car.

Most of the cattle in the front half of Raphael’s stock car were calm. Some were lying in the straw, belching and chewing their cuds. A few were crowded nervously against the walls, as far away from the men as possible. The men themselves grumbled and joked about riding in the dark. They sipped whiskey, slept, and complained because Raphael wouldn’t let them smoke in the straw. Now and then someone would get up and grope his way among the horses to urinate, trying not to stumble, and clucking to calm any restless beast that might take a notion to kick.

After five hours, Raphael figured they were getting close to Monterey station. The men bridled and cinched up five of the horses. When Raphael felt the train beginning to slow, he put on his sheepskin jacket and a pair of leather gloves, then eased open the door of the car just enough to squeeze through. It was raining. Not too hard, but the wet steel of the ladder on the side of the car was slippery. Someone pulled the door closed, and Raphael climbed to the roof, made his way forward, and got down in the space between cars. He moved back and forth from one side of the train to the other, looking for torches up ahead, and hoping that the Monterey Vigilance Committee had decided to stay home out of the rain tonight.

When he spotted a dozen or so torches on the west side of the train, Raphael got back to the door of the car and banged to be let in. His men were armed with pistols, rifles, and shotguns. There was only one door to the car, on the east side. They mounted their animals, facing that side in a loose semicircle, and each trained a cocked and loaded weapon on the door. Most of them, including Raphael, were hoping to get out of this yard without incident. Gyp was enjoying the moment, however, and anticipating a good fight. Raphael untied the rope holding up the stock ramp. If he released it after the door was open, the ramp would drop from its own weight.

The general plan was to avoid discovery, but if the door came open, Raphael had directed everyone to ride out of there fast, doing as much damage as possible on the way, and to head south a mile or so to rendezvous, unless they were being chased. Then it would have to be every man for himself.

The train came to a halt. Shouting could be heard up the tracks toward the engine, but the words were unintelligible. As the group of gunmen waited, a couple of voices became louder and clearer. Some men were coming down the tracks toward them, but it sounded like they were keeping to the west side of the train. Raphael’s men whispered to their horses, trying to calm them, but the excitement of being bridled and readied for riding was stirring them up.

“Hey, thar!” a man shouted just outside their car, “They got cattle and maybe some mules in these cars here.” He rattled the slats on that side.

Someone answered, “Well, goddamit, don’t open the car up unless you wanna be chasin’ stock around here the rest of the night. Jesus!”

Through the gaps in the sideboards, Raphael and the others could see two men with torches, and the shadows of two long guns in the firelight.

“Yeah, Boy. Ima turn’em loose for ya. Help ya pass the time, roundin’ ‘em up.”

The torches sprinkled their light over the crowd of men and beasts inside the train, but revealed nothing. In response to human voices, the shuffling hooves and agitated snorting of the animals inside became louder and more rapid.

A shout from a third man up the tracks was answered by one of the torch bearers, “C’mon, boy! Get a move on. It’s rainin’ out here, y’ know.”

The late arrival soon caught up. “Well. Y’ seen any Chinamens yet? Ah got ma scalpin’ knife, just in case.”

“Nah,” one answered, “ Hell, what ‘a you know about scalpin’, anyway? You was still suckin’ Mama’s milk in them days.”

“Hell, Man! I say bring back the scalpin’ times, that’s what. They ought ‘a put a bounty on the Chinamens’ heads like they use to do the Redskins. Hell, Man! This’d be white man’s country again in no time.”

One of the men answered with a laugh. “Yeah, you missed out, Young’n. Them fellas up around the Mother Lode, they used to pay us a dollar a piece back then. Indians or Mexicans, didn’t matter. Ain’t that right, Singalong?”

The two older men chattered on to the kid about the old days as torchlight diminished and darkness returned to the interior of the car. The vigilante voices soon mingled with the drip and drizzle of rain, becoming garbled and inaudible, as the men moved away down the tracks, farther from the security of their comrades who huddled under the eaves of the Monterey Station House.

Raphael’s companions began to converse in their own language, which he barely understood. He did hear “sing along” mentioned several times. Finally, he hushed the men.

“Will you guys shut up, for Christ sake?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

Gyp sidled over to him and gripped his arm. “Felix knows one of those guys,” he said.

“What guys? Them guys outside with the ropes and guns? Those guys who’ll lynch us if they get the chance? Just be quiet, and we’ll get out of here alive in a few minutes, if we’re lucky.”

“One of ‘em is Singalong Smith,” Gyp whispered.

Raphael didn’t answer. He noticed that everyone was quiet now, but he could see enough in the dark to know they were all watching him.

“Who the hell is Singalong Smith?”

“He killed a lot of people,” Gyp continued, “In the old days. Up around Grinding Rock.”

“Killed what people? Friends of Felix?”

“Yeah. Family. Felix knows that Singalong real well. Been waiting to find that man someday.”

“Good,” said Raphael, “now you found him, Felix. Later on you can come back here and scalp the sonofabitch. But …”

Felix said something in Miwok. Gyp translated.

“Now is the time.”

Raphael sighed and leaned back against the slats. “Shit!”

Felix eased open the door of the boxcar and dropped to the ground outside, in direct contradiction to Raphael’s plan and his orders. But the Andaluce clan was not asking for his permission, and he couldn’t stop them. Four Wild Indians on the warpath. Those white guys shouldn’t have said all that shit about scalping, right outside the car like that, where Felix and them could hear. Those white guys should have talked about something else, so they could have lived a little longer.

Raphael realized that a change of plan was necessary. He thought about what to do. They were probably going to have to shoot their way out of there. If he were going to get to San Luis to help Jorge, he’d have to make a run for it now, before the fighting started. The train could get moving at any time. Worse yet, that bunch from the station might decide to come down and check on their friends. He decided to wait a few more minutes, and then a few more, and kept postponing his move. His heart did a jump when the door was suddenly slid open.

Felix scrambled into the car and took the rope from Raphael’s hand, then lowered the stock ramp slowly and quietly. Eighteen-year-old Gyp climbed up the ramp out of breath, carrying the body of a man across his shoulders. Raphael got off his horse and helped ease the load down onto the straw. The rest of a macabre caravan followed, with two more bodies. Felix worked the rope and pulley, raising the ramp back into place, and Ignatio closed the door behind them.

Raphael groped in the dark and was relieved to discover that there was no blood. He took that as a good omen. The men were dead, however. Strangled, he supposed. Now, if the train would just get moving. With the deceased on board, the Sheriffs and Federal Marshals wouldn’t be involved right away, if the Indians could get out of the station undetected. But as soon as the white men were missed, there would be trouble. Raphael’s mind was tiptoeing on the edge of panic. Even if they got out of there, the station at San Luis would be contacted. That was the next station, and the train would be searched there for sure. They might even be stopped on the way.

“We have to dump these guys pretty soon,” Raphael announced. Nobody said anything. He wanted to ask Felix why he had killed all these guys tonight, just to make conversation. Gyp saved him the trouble.

“Why’d you have to do that, Felix?” His voice was trembling. Gyp liked to fight. He was used to winning money in bare fist matches around home. But he’d never seen anyone killed before. He’d never really associated fighting with killing, until now.

Felix, in his sixties, with gray hair that hung straight to his waist, didn’t answer. He was a man of few words, and besides, his brother-in-law, Ely, had developed the habit over the years of speaking on Felix’ behalf.

“What the hell did you do to those guys, anyway?” Raphael insisted. “The whole idea is to get to San Luis without any trouble, for Christ Sake.”

Ely answered, “Felix is pretty sure that one of these older guys is Singalong Smith. There weren’t a lot of white men with that first name who used to scalp people in the gold country. So Felix is pretty sure he got the right fella.”

“Well, as long as he’s pretty sure. So, you think this old boy killed some of your people?” Raphael knew that was a stupid question, but he felt the need to say something, “He killed someone you know?”

Felix probably just looked at him. It was too dark to tell for sure, but that’s what Felix usually did when you asked him a question. He’d just look at you with a sort of inquiring expression.

“Lots a’ people,” said Ely, after a suitable interval of silence.

“Our grandparents?” whispered Ignatio, “Is he the one killed your mother and father, Tio?”

After another seemingly eternal 30 seconds of silence, Ely said, “No. That warn’t the one. That fella’s name was Coonskin. Felix ain’t found him yet. ‘Course, they was a lot of old boys name a’ Coonskin back then.”

Soon the steam engine coughed, the whistle sounded, followed by the thunder of freight cars being jerked forward on their couplings traveled down the tracks. With great relief, Raphael felt the wheels beneath them begin to turn. The shriek of the whistle started up a chorus of coyote chatter from the surrounding meadows, as the cattle cars moved past the station house. The vigilantes had extinguished their torches and were standing around the wood stove inside the building, awaiting the return of their comrades.

The train accelerated for several minutes and then began to slow as it reached a long grade into the mountains. Felix slid the door open, allowing the rain and wind to do a whirlng performance through the car. He stood in the opening for a quarter of an hour as the trained climbed to a summit, then began to drag the corpses, one by one, to the doorway and dump them off. No one moved to assist him. Then Felix broke his silence, and began to shout into the night in his mother tongue. Raphael figured he must be praying, and this was confirmed when Gyp, who was huddled up against Raphael, crossed himself.

After a while, Felix stopped shouting, or chanting, or whatever he’d been doing, and closed the door. He turned and sat in the damp straw. Ely suddenly began reciting the Pater Noster in a nervous, high-pitched tone, and his nephews and brother-in-law responded. It was too dark to see clearly, but Raphael could hear the faint rattling of rosary beads. After a while, he joined in the prayers.

BARBARIA installment 4

2009-11-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER FOUR

Two men from Jorge’s group waded through a large tide pool, gathering mussels, sea snails and abalone. Jorge and some of the others were fishing and relaxing on the beach. Since crossing the border into the U.S., south of San Diego, the band had been traveling on foot with four pack animals, following the coastline, but staying off the wagon trails to avoid hostile encounters. Rogelio Diaz and Esteban Castillo had been to California before as railroad workers, and were acting as guides. They advised camping near the beach for a few days while Jorge rode into Los Angeles to arrange for rail transport to San Francisco. The group had found a good campsite in a grove of willow by a fresh water stream about a half-mile inland. It had been raining all morning, but now the skies were clear, and the sun was a welcome sight. Two men had stayed back to watch the camp, while the rest of the travelers came downstream to the sea.

“This should be a good place to stay for a few days,” Jorge said to Angelita Torres, who was introducing herself and her naked baby boy to the Pacific Ocean.

“Yes,” she was a big woman who laughed frequently, and loved to talk. “I don’t know which is worse, walking or riding in a bumpy wagon. What will the train be like? At least the tracks don’t have all those bumps, do they?” A tiny wave splashed the baby in the face, and he squealed. Several other children were running about at the water’s edge.

“No, no. The tracks don’t have bumps,” Jorge grinned at the baby. “I’m going to try to get us onto a comfortable car, but I don’t know. These gringos have strange ideas about Mexicans riding their trains.”

“But we have papers, no?” Angelita said. A hint of anxiety in her voice was evident.

“Oh, yes. There shouldn’t be any problems with the authorities. I just hope they don’t put us in a cattle car,” Jorge said, only half joking.

“You know, my oldest brother, Francisco…He was killed over here. The friendly smile left Angelita’s lips for just a moment, then returned.”

“I’m sorry,” Jorge said. “What happened?”

“I don’t want to stay here … in the camp, I mean… too long.” Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper, and she leaned toward Jorge, as though telling a secret. “We shouldn’t stay here too long.”

“What is it? What happened to your brother?”

“Ah,” she waved her hand before her face, brushing away the question like an irritating insect. “It was one of those terrible things, you know? I can’t really talk about it. But I admit, I’m afraid to be here, in El Norte.”

“But you didn’t have to come, Angelita,” Jorge protested, “Your husband will be back in a year, and he’ll be able to send you money in the meantime.”

The woman shook her head. “You are an educated man, Senor, but there is a lot you don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry,” Jorge said, “I just meant…”

“I believe you mean well,” she said. “Your brother, Lazaro, is said to be a man of conscience. Someone to be trusted. He knows that we have lost everything. That we are doing what is necessary.”

“Lost everything? What do you mean?” Jorge hadn’t been briefed on the life circumstances of his recruited laborers. He only knew that they were reputable people who needed work.

“Our village used to hold a thousand hectares in communal land,” Angelita said. “For many generations we raised our crops, cared for our children. Until ten years ago, we had no need to leave home to make a living.”

At Cambridge, Jorge’s studies had not included the history and politics of his homeland. He said nothing.

“Now we starve,” the woman said. The child began to fuss. His mother gathered him into her arms and walked out of the water.

Her abrupt departure struck Jorge as ominous, causing him to shudder. He wanted to run behind her and tell her not to worry, that she and her family would be safe with him, with his government document; safe from politicians and bandits and Sheriffs and vigilantes and soldiers; safe from people and forces that he knew nothing about; with which he had no experience; over which he had no power. He suddenly felt like a small boy, just pretending to be a man. He wished that this woman, who was depending on him, could instead comfort him. Wished that she had not walked away, but taken him in her arms like a baby. Held him naked above the waves to hear him giggle.

There was a shout from the tide pool. One of the men was waving his arms wildly and calling for assistance. The women at once gathered the children and herded them toward the blankets on the beach, and Jorge sprinted through the shallows toward the man. He turned and ran behind a huge rock that rose from the water’s edge, where his companion was sitting on the sand, holding an unconscious child in his arms.

“Get water to drink!” he shouted, “Run. Get water. She’s dying.”

The two men had stumbled by chance upon a tangle of arms and legs heaped upon the sand, attracting the attention of hungry shore birds. The girl, who appeared to be eleven or twelve years of age, was breathing, and when fresh water finally touched her lips, she began to gulp and cough. The men carried her back to camp, and everyone gathered around to watch with some amazement as Angelita took charge of the effort to nurse the starving, dehydrated white child back to health.

Rogelio Diaz was worried. A short, stocky man in his forties, he rolled a cigarette and seated himself on a fallen log. “Someone could come looking for that girl,” he said.

Esteban was half Rogelio’s age. He was shirtless, and a wooden cross dangled on a rawhide thong around his neck. He nodded in agreement. “If she were my kid, I’d sure be looking for her.”

“I hope somebody does come along,” said Jorge. “Otherwise, we’ll have to find a doctor somewhere, or take her to a hospital in Los Angeles.”

“That could be dangerous,” said Rogelio. “Maybe somebody attacked her. Her dress is torn. She is bruised and scratched up.”

“Yeah,” said Esteban, “They could say we did it, huh?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jorge snapped, “why should….”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Rogelio cut him off, “ It’s a real possibility.”

“Christ, Rogelio,” Jorge said, “We’re not kidnappers. What should we have done? Just left her to die?”

“Sometimes Gringos don’t listen,” Rogelio said. “Sometimes they already have their minds made up about certain things. We need to find out who she is and what happened, before we decide what to do.”

“She probably doesn’t speak Spanish,” Esteban said. “You should be here, Jorge, if she gets better and starts talking.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Jorge said. “Probably the day after tomorrow. Three days at the most.”

“I think we’ll send Esteban with you,” Rogelio said. “If you learn anything about this kid, he can ride back here and let us know.”

Jorge and Esteban rode out of camp before dawn, heading east and following a trail beside the stream that would eventually put them on a road to Los Angeles. Well before midday, they found themselves in a crowded village. Most of the people on the main street were Mexicans. At a café Esteban asked if they could unsaddle the horses for a while, and water them. When the horses were tended to, the two men ordered something to eat and drink, and settled on a bench in front of the place.

“Should we ask someone about the girl?” asked Esteban, devouring a steaming tortilla as he spoke.

“I don’t know. Rogelio warned us to be careful about what we say when we talk about her. I’ll see if I can get a newspaper,” Jorge said. He went inside and came out with a two page Los Angeles journal that carried yesterday’s date. The girl’s story was on the back page:

The San Fernando Sheriff’s Office says they still have no clues in the disappearance from the Mission of a young American girl last week. Father Sebastian told the news reporters that he believes the child was kidnapped, since she was very happy and well treated at Mission San Fernando, and had no reason to run away. The girl’s parents are both dead, and she is an orphan with no family and nowhere to go. Father Sebastian asked the reporters to tell all the people who read about this girl to pray for her safety and for her immortal soul, and to call the Sheriff if they know where she is.

Jorge decided to return to camp with Esteban. He didn’t want to make transport arrangements until they could decide what to do about the Gringa. They finished their meal and saddled up; On the road back they passed an open pool of crude oil. Esteban dismounted, emptied one of their goatskin water bags, and filled it about half way with oil.

“I think were going to have to make a Mestiso of that girl”, he said, “I think we have to take her with us.”

* * *

Mary Hogan Devine, a U.S. Army Officer’s daughter, should have had a better life. At the age of 33, on a grand day in May 1887, beneath a sky that was a bright blue playground for swallows, Mary was buried in the churchyard of Mission San Fernando. At the edge of her open grave, rising behind a pile of fresh earth like spindly pickets of a broken fence, stood her three orphaned children.

Frances, age ten, was the oldest but not the tallest. Her nine-year-old brother, Frank Jr., already outgrowing his sister, stood at attention to her left. Six-year-old Terrance was at Frances’ right, clutching her hand and sucking his thumb rapidly. She had been telling him all day to stop, because he was too old for that now, but he would not. She needn’t have worried. The Holy Friars of the orphanage would break his habit soon enough, with numerous raps on the head.

Terrance was also quietly weeping, and his nose channeled great droplets of snot and tears over his lips and down his chin. Frances reached across to wipe the chin, and then cleaned her hand in the cotton folds of her gray funeral skirt.

Frank Jr. stood at attention, playing soldier, and would not cry. He was going to be an army colonel like his dead grandfather someday, and during this morning of prayers for his dead mother’s soul, he had been leading a fantasy brigade of Bluecoat cavalry across a distant battlefield, slaughtering Redskins.

To divert her own attention from the drone of graveside praying and the sucking sounds of Terrance at work on his thumb, Frances focused on the soaring and dipping of swallows. There were also eagles and buzzards gliding by on occasion, and high above the rolling hills to the north, the girl had spotted a wedge of migrating geese.

Mary used to tell her children that geese and swallows were birds of passage, who flew away each year to seek happiness in other places, because the darkness and cold of winter made them feel miserable.

Sometimes Mary would admonish her daughter alone, away from the boys, whispering softly, holding her close. The child cherished such moments of intimate attention, but it was seldom lost on Frances that Mother’s lectures concerning misery and birds of passage were invariably delivered when the woman was suffering greatly. After a drunken rage by Daddy, ordinarily, or when something really terrible had happened.

After the cornfield flooded, Frances recalled, Mary had gone to tiresome lengths to distinguish in the minds of her children between misery and suffering. That had been three years ago. Father had been found dead in Los Angeles, and a week later a flash flood had destroyed their entire corn crop when it was too late to re-plant.

“God has allowed hardship to befall us,” she shouted over the screams of Terrance, who was only three at the time, “but that does not mean He does not love us.”

There was a long porch in front of their single story farmhouse. Mary had arranged her children in a row on the porch, and stood before them, delivering her message on the meaning of the latest disasters to be visited upon the family.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have sent us a burden, that is all. They have allowed your father to die and our crop to be destroyed, and we must suffer for it. But,” she said with emphasis, “We are not to allow this burden of suffering to make us miserable! I’ve taught you about the birds of passage. Neither birds nor people were ever intended to be miserable. You children are never to let anyone persuade you that God wishes misery upon His creatures. Suffering, yes, misery, no.”

The Gospel according to Mary Devine had always been incomprehensible to Frances, until now. On the day of Mary’s death, Frances had discovered misery, and the need to fly away.

Father Sebastian, delivering his graveside message to fourteen souls, including three friars and two nuns from the Orphanage, noticed Frances craning her neck, staring at the swallows overhead. He gathered the skirt of his brown robe and held it above his sandals, lest he trip into the grave, then circled the hole and the pile of dirt to stand directly before the children. Terrance stopped sucking, Frank Jr. saluted, and Frances stared into the pale eyes of the priest, her jaw agape.

Speaking directly to the girl in tones a bit too resonant with compassion, Father said, “ We must all suffer and make sacrifices. That is the meaning of The Holy Cross of Our Savior.” He paused to finger the ivory and silver crucifix at his chest, and to let his words find their way into the children’s inattentive souls.

“Jesus suffered on the cross,” he told them, “but He was a person with joy in his heart, like those swallows in the sky. You have lost your dear mother. Now it is your time to suffer for God as Our Lord has suffered for all of us. But learn from the swallows, my children. Even though your suffering is great, do not let The Devil steal the joy from your heart.”

Father’s reference to the swallows delivered a much more powerful message to young Frances than the priest had intended. The synchronicity of the moment made her feel that her mother, Mary, had spoken directly to her from Heaven, using the voice of the priest. The words did not make her feel good, but they gave her a shred of irrational, sustaining hope. Nonetheless she was to remain cruelly miserable after her mother’s death, and at the orphanage, all traces of joy did in fact disappear from her heart.

In a deal brokered by a local bank and the County Juvenile Court, Frances and her brothers had been traded to the Mission Orphanage in exchange for the deed to the Devine farm. The female orphans worked every day either in the kitchen or the laundry, while the boys did farm work. Through the winter, Frances was assigned to clean up duty in the kitchen. She washed pots and pans, swept floors, and mopped.

All around the Mission Compound, including the orphanage, the eaves of the buildings were encrusted with the mud of swallows’ nests. In early spring, the birds began to fly incessantly back and forth between nests and fields during the day, and each evening at sunset the mission grounds was clouded with birds returning home for the night. After Vespers in the chapel each evening, Frances liked to climb the stairs to her dormitory, to sit on her bed and watch the birds at work on their nests outside her window.

Frances knew that in summer the young would appear, teetering on the edges of their tiny mud doorways in the morning, encouraged by frantic adults to leap into the air and begin to fly. She also knew that in the fall the nests would empty. The swallows would depart for another winter, and would not return until the next spring.

Just after the first appearance of the swallows, Frances was rotated to laundry duty, and given the job of stirring bubbling tubs of dirty clothing for three hours each day, under the direct supervision of Friar Mark. The work was physically difficult as well as monotonous. Frances asked Friar Mark, after a few days, if there were some other chores that she could perform to alleviate her boredom. He lectured her on the importance of obedience and duty, and then suggested that at some later date he would be willing to make a more suitable arrangement for her.

Frances had been working in the laundry for about a week, when her supervisor appeared at the beginning of her shift one day with a young, hairless bunny procured from a nest in the Mission livestock compound. He showed it to Frances, and she protested that the creature was too young to be removed from the nest.

“Begging your pardon, Friar,” Frances said, “ but you oughtn’t to touch a bunny so young. The mother could kick it from the nest, after this. Or she may even destroy all of the litter. We’ve had them do that at home.”

The holy monk ignored the child’s protests, and proceeded to explain that the soaking vats contained lye, and to instruct the girl, in the interest of her safety, concerning the caustic properties of lye. For that lesson he had devised a special teaching technique.

Friar Mark was a dark, hairy man of forty years, with a huge chest and powerful arms. The son of a Mexican caballero and a Swedish prostitute, he had been delivered to the orphanage shortly after birth, and had seldom been outside its walls since. There was little he did not know about raising rabbits and manipulating children.

“Come with me,” he said, turning and climbing four steps up to a stirring platform alongside of one of the laundry vats. Frances hesitated, and he barked at her, “Get up here now, girl. Do as you’re told.”

Frances climbed the steps and stood beside him. He grinned at the girl, and took a length of twine from his tunic pocket. He tied one end of the string around the bunny’s middle and, as Frances watched in horror, dangled the creature above the vat. For a moment, he held the bunny at the surface of the bubbling liquid, allowing it to squeal with pain before he dipped it in all the way. Frances began to back away from the man, but he gripped her arm with his free hand, and lifted the dead animal out of the laundry water and held it aloft.

“You see, child, how its skin is now bright red and blistered? Do you see what terrible burns you can receive from these tubs?” He swung the grotesque object before her face and chuckled, then moved his hand quickly from her arm to the back of her neck. He began to push her slowly forward, bending her over the guardrail above the liquid.

Friar Mark then warned the girl in a hoarse whisper to be very quiet, and not to scream. He dropped the dead rabbit into the vat, reached under her skirt, and began to massage her crotch. Then he forced her hand under his tunic and instructed her to return the favor.

A few days later, Frances’ brother, Frank, told his sister that he didn’t want to escape. He liked the mission, because the friars let him and young Terry ride horses, and the boys didn’t have to work in the laundry.

The next morning before dawn, Frances climbed over a low wall of the compound and began walking west. Terrified of capture, the girl avoided roads and walked through rocky hills and woodlands, eventually losing all sense of direction. After several days she came at random upon the Pacific Ocean, and lay down to die.

While she was dying, Frances’ mother approached her, walking out of the waves at the edge of the sea.

“Frances,” Mary Hogan said to her daughter, “you have fallen from the sky like an injured bird. You must have broken a wing.”

The girl was filled with joy to see her mother again. “No, Mama,” she said, “I have no wings. Only legs and arms, and I can’t fly at all. I’ve tried, but I can’t fly. Can you lift me up, Mommy? Can you take me with you into the water?”

“Of course, my love,” Mary reached down and touched her child’s swollen face, “But first let my friends take care of your injuries. Can you see them? Over there beyond the rocks. Here, let me hold you so you can see them.” She lifted the child above the rocks and pointed out a group of people down the beach. “See that man, there, standing with the woman in the water? See him? The very dark man?”

Frances had trouble paying attention, because she was so happy to be with her mother again. She wrapped her arms around Mary’s neck and kissed her face and began to cry. “I’ve missed you so much, Mommy,” she said.

Mary comforted her and smiled. Frances relaxed, and her mother asked her again, “Do you see him? The dark man over there with the woman? This time Frances looked very hard and saw clearly. “Yes, Mama, I see him. Who is he?

“He will speak to you soon. The woman will treat your injuries, and the man will speak to you. I have arranged for him to take care of you, so don’t worry. You have some distance yet to fly, but you and I will be together very soon.

“Are you going to leave me again?

Mary didn’t reply. She embraced her child and kissed her, then returned her to the place where she had fallen. Frances watched her mother walk away up the beach, then drifted off to sleep.

BARBARIA installment 3

2009-10-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

BARBARIA, CHAPTER THREE

An excited crowd was waiting for the brothers at the Vallejo station as the train belched steam and wood-smoke along the platform and screeched to a halt. Natividad, the elder half-sister whom the twins called “Auntie”, and who had assumed the role of mother in their lives from the day that they were born, abandoned all decorum and ran to Jorge as he stepped down from the car. Another sister stood back, holding her youngest child in her arms. Brothers-in-law patrolled the edge of the platform, keeping a hoard of nieces and nephews from getting too close to the train.

When the energetic ritual of greeting and welcome finally subsided, Jorge glanced up and down the platform, looking for his twin.

“Ah, that Raphael,” said Auntie, “He’s never on time.”

The family had arrived at the station in two enclosed buggies and a covered surrey for Jorge’s steamer trunks. Rain swirled about the tiny caravan, which made its way through the cobbled streets of Vallejo to the grand home of Lazarus O’Brian. The estate occupied three acres of wooded, bay-shore land just a quarter mile off the foot of Main Street. The principal house was a three-storied British Colonial mansion of 18 rooms, with a spacious verandah running the perimeter of the building. The primary outbuilding was a Spanish adobe residence of two stories, built at the water’s edge. There were six other Mexican families besides his own, living on Lazaro’s premises, all of whom enjoyed protected status as employees of Lazarus O’Brian, attorney at law.

“In fact, only four of the people that live here work for me,” Lazaro said to Jorge as their buggy came to a stop before the main house. “The rest earn their incomes on the farms and other estates around town. The wages they receive are too low for a decent life, so I provide housing and see to it that the children can go to school instead of to work.”

“Isn’t it bad for business, Mr. O’Brian? Associating with all of these Mexicans?” Jorge grinned and kissed Auntie on the cheek. She was nearly twenty years older than Jorge. A wealthy, golden haired white woman, married to a Mayan caballero. Their four children were nearly as dark skinned as the twins.

“This is California,” said Auntie. “Here, everything is business. Especially Mexicans.”

Before Jorge could respond, the carriage door flew open, and there stood Raphael in a tan Stetson and a blue oilcloth slicker, grinning. He held out his hand for Auntie to descend, then offered the hand to Jorge.

How are you?
Fine.
Let me kiss you.
You look well.
So you wear the diamond, like Lazaro.
El Diamante lives on.
You look well also.
I think you’re taller than me.
It’s these boots.
Good to see you, my brother.
Are you going to stay in California?
Don’t know yet.
I hope you stay.
It’s possible.
I must go, now.
Then let me embrace you again, Adios.

Raphael climbed into a buckboard behind a matched pair of gray mules, and drove away to the east. A boy of ten or eleven years sat beside him on the wagon bench. The boy twisted in his seat and watched Jorge with dark eyes as the pair disappeared into the trees that sheltered the house from the street.

“Who’s the child?” Jorge asked his sister.

“His name is Jewett. An Indian boy from Vacaville. Raphael is friendly with the family, and the boy goes everywhere with him these days.”

Dogs of various shapes and sizes galloped about as people climbed the broad staircase to the front door of the house. An ornate porch swing, occupied by an enormous cat, hung by ropes from the beams of the verandah. Several men, women and children had emerged from the house when the caravan arrived, and Jorge was dutifully introduced. A hodge-podge of wooden and covered chairs was arranged along the porch before the arched windows of the house. There were three round oak tables as well, covered with brightly colored oilcloth, weighted down with lamps, decorative bowls of fruit and nuts, and pitchers of lemonade, water and wine. More food soon was served: tortillas, chilies, corn and beans, steaming platters of shredded beef and pork. The front porch was sheltered from the prevailing breeze off the bay. Even in dreary weather, the temperature was comfortable. Heavy coats and slickers were shed, and soon there was a fiesta in progress.

Eventually the food was consumed and the tables cleared. As the evening temperature dropped lower, fires were built in the hearths of the great house, and everyone went inside. Jorge’s eldest nephew was a musician, and was trying to teach his newly arrived uncle how to chord a guitar. Lazaro sat across the room in an over stuffed chair, upholstered in black and white goatskin. He sipped a cup of hot tea, and shouted above the distorted notes of his brother’s musical efforts.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet tomorrow, Mi Hermano. Would you mind coming to my office in the afternoon?”

Jorge nodded in assent. He couldn’t answer verbally, because his tongue protruded from his mouth, gripped between his teeth, in an effort of concentration. He remembered the last thing Auntie had said, before Raphael appeared, and erased all else from his mind. “Here, everything is business. Especially Mexicans.”

The next morning, Lazaro and Jorge arrived at his office just ahead of Christain Phelps, who was an important man. That is to say he was a very rich man, who owned hundreds of acres of orchards, vineyards, alfalfa, grain and vegetable crops in the western Sacramento Valley. He had made his fortune growing wheat in the eastern valley, ably assisted by Lazarus O’Brian. By the 1870’s, strip miners of the Sierra gold fields had destroyed many square miles of foothill watershed, and floods had ruined Phelps’ crops three years in a row. Lazarus had been an attorney for the mining interests at that time, but for reasons that had never been clear to Phelps, changed sides. He went on to become one of the leading organizers of legal strategy against the seemingly omnipotent California mineral kings. When the state legislature finally found the courage to clamp down on the mining tycoons, Phelps was among the principal benefactors. His fortune was saved, and he had been a favored and loyal client of Riordan, Cleary and O’Brian ever since.

“Mr. Phelps, may I present my brother, Senor Obregon?” Christian and Jorge shook hands.

“Hell, I’ve known this boy for years,” said Phelps, “Senor, my foot. Howdy, Raphael.”

Lazaro laughed and Jorge explained, and the landowner repeated Jorge’s name several times, trying to pronounce it and remember it. Phelps was having critical labor problems, since diversifying his farming operations. He had invested heavily in his west valley orchards when there was a plentiful Chinese and Irish work force.

“Used to be we had plenty wanting work,” Phelps explained to Jorge, “after the railroad was built, and after all the small prospectors lost their shirts. Then that panic hit in the ‘70’s. You know, all that Wall Street stuff. That was good for us. But now there’s plenty of other work for the white boys, you know, so they don’t want to stay in the orchards. And the Chinamen, you know, the government’s trying to send them all back where they came from.”

It seemed to Phelps and his fellow fruit and nut growers, that a Mexican labor source was their best hope for keeping pace with expanding markets. O’Brian, whose family and business connections in Mexico were well known, had become a focus for that hope.

“So we’re sort of counting on you boys, now. You know, the Mexicans, to get in here and get some work done for us, you know.”

Jorge smiled, “Don’t look at me. I don’t climb trees. I don’t think you’ll get much field work out of Raphael, either, from what I’ve been hearing.”

Phelps blushed and looked at the floor, “Naw, I mean, we’re hoping you boys can set up some kind of labor camp, you know, maybe over there around Vacaville somewhere. Bring some folks on up from Mexico, you know.”

“It’s against Mexican law to contract for Mexican labor,” said Lazaro.

“Yeah,” Phelps drawled, “Lot’s of things are against the law.”

Lazaro grinned, “Yes. And the law is, er, selectively enforced. The railroads do plenty of labor contracting south of the border, and Mexicans are doing most of the work in the farms around Los Angeles, now. Of course, the railroads and those L. A. farmers have a lot of influence in Sacramento.”

“Well, then, by God, so can we,” said Phelps, “ Why ain’t those field hands coming up here for work?” He wore the plain cotton clothing of a worker, himself. His nails were dirty and his hands callused. Short, stocky, in his early sixties, he leaned forward, elbows on knees. His thin hair was red and gray, his eyes bright blue. He liked to be called “Rusty”, but most people, including Lazaro, addressed him as Mr. Phelps.

“Well, they probably don’t like getting the shit beat out of them and their women raped,” Lazaro said. “Also, it’s a question of supply and demand right now. There’s plenty of work for them closer to the border.”

Phelps shook his head and laughed. “One thing I don’t like about you, Lazarus, is the way you pussy-foot around, always trying to look on the bright side.”

Jorge smiled, and decided to ask a question. “Lazaro. What about all of those people at your place? At your home? Why are they there?”

“I provide housing and some protection,” He said, “Otherwise, most of them would be gone in the morning.”

“You’re operating a small scale labor camp at home, then?” Jorge continued his inquiry.

“Yeah. Of course most of the people are family, but it’s still a business. Not altogether legal, but a business that pays for itself, and nobody’s complaining to the authorities.”

Phelps and his associates were familiar with the Lazarus O’Brian “Boarding House”. They had already approached him about expanding it, but Lazaro was reluctant to operate a larger operation in his own home.

“It’s also against Mexican law to go down there and recruit workers to leave the country,” Lazaro said, “ but there are ways around it. I’ve been in contact with some people in Jalisco State. If we can set up a labor camp over in your area, Mr. Phelps, without attracting too much attention, I think we can get a seasonal work force up here.”

After another hour of discussion, Lazaro and Phelps drew up a plan of action. Jorge, who could not help becoming intrigued by the possibilities, remained non-committal. Phelps pressed him.

“Hell, you oughta get in on this, Son. We’re gonna need someone to go down there to Mexico and organize this thing, you know? I mean, if we can get those idiots in Washington and Sacramento to give a little.”

“Oh, they’ll give more than a little, I think,” said Lazaro. “If you want the job, Jorge, you could be on your way to Jalisco within a fortnight.”

* * *

The next morning was a Wednesday. Jorge rose early and shared breakfast with his sisters and their children. Then he strolled over to Main Street to wire Professor Stanley Evans of The California University Philosophy Department, to request a personal interview during the following week.

The California University at Berkeley consisted of nine buildings, with four more under construction. The setting, in the lush hills over looking San Francisco Bay, was idyllic. The weather was warm on the day of Jorge’s visit. Squirrels and rabbits gamboled about the lawns, entertaining students who sat like squirrels on their haunches under trees, chattering between classes. The philosophers were housed with historians and anthropologists in a stately wooden structure, just a few yards from the library. Jorge had over two hours yet to wait for his interview. Captivated by what he saw around him, he could not help but hope for the best.

Professor Evans had upon his desk a few papers that he had just removed from a file envelope labeled “Royce”. He slid the folder to one side, then began to study the contents of the file. There was an application for admission from Jorge Obregon, as well as his Cambridge record and a telegram. A second telegram from the Dean of Graduate Admissions at Harvard was also in the file, and a letter from Josiah Royce. In response to a rap on the office door, and Evans called out, “Come in.”

“Good morning, Stanley. I have your note here. I must say you’ve aroused my curiosity with it.” Walter Dervish was a portly man with a bristly mustache and heavy glasses, who liked to wear brown tweed. Stanley invited him to sit down and asked that he wait just one moment.

Professor Evans, a tall fellow with pomaded hair and a prominent Adam’s apple, was near sighted, but didn’t like to wear glasses, so he did his reading and writing with his nose just a couple of inches from his pages. He had dipped his quill pen, and was engaged at the moment, apparently bringing an important sentence to completion. “Ah,” he said at last, “There we are.”

Walter raised his eyebrows, wondering just where they were. He was a professor of Anthropology who specialized in the study of California Indian People, with a special interest in their anatomy and physiognomy. He had studied with Herbert Spenser at Harvard, and focused his academic endeavors on connecting the intellectual and cultural inferiority of the Coastal Indian to the shapes of their heads, as well as certain bodily proportions. “What’s all this about an intellectual Indian?”

“Yes, well you’ll soon see for yourself, I expect,” said Evans. “Have you set aside some time for the interview today?”

“By all means. Wouldn’t miss it, you know. But who is this fellow, anyway. And what sort of Indian? Plains? Athabascan? Full blood, or a mix?”

“Mixed with negro, apparently,” said Evans. “He attempted to gain entrance to Harvard, in Philosophy. But I have a letter from the Dean of Admissions at Harvard. You know him, do you?”

“Everett. Of course. Excellent fellow. He was assistant Dean of the College when I was there.”

“Yes, that’s the man. He’s in charge of graduate admissions, now. They don’t accept Negroes, of course, so they’ve sent the boy along to us, it seems. You know Josiah Royce, eh? He’s very keen on this bloke. Says we should give him a go here.”

“Well I certainly know Royce by reputation, but never met the man. Not very interested in his sort of thinking, if you know what I mean. Very weak on scientific method. So this student is a Negro Indian, you say. Probably Cherokee or Seminole then. A lot of those mixed-bloods down there in the old Confederate states. What’s the boy’s background, then?”

“He’s taken a special certificate in Colonial Administration from Cambridge College, but managed to do quite a bit of work in Philosophy as well, and wants to earn a doctoral degree in the good old U.S. of A. Royce refers to the boy as ‘brilliant’, and says he has strong family connections here in California.”

“California? You mean his Indian blood is Californian?” Walter surged forward to the edge of his seat. “Where does this family live in California?”

“Not far from here. Just across the bay, in Vallejo,” said Stanley.

“You don’t say. Why, that’s incredible! A local Miwok who is literate? Intelligent, you say? You know, the Mendelians say that there’s such a thing as ‘hybrid vigor’. Maybe…”

“Yes, well, we we’re hoping you’d be interested,” Evans interrupted. He had no interest himself in Dervish’s area of expertise, and was not in the mood for a lecture on Mendel and Spenser.

He explained to Dervish that the Philosophy Department was not going to take a ‘darkie’ into the fold, and especially not a Harvard reject foisted upon them by Josiah Royce. One of the professors even suspected the entire enterprise was a fraudulent joke, cooked up by Royce and his Ivy League snobs to make California University a laughing stock. At the same time, neither the department nor the University wished to risk offending Royce and that bunch by rejecting the fellow outright. Someone had suggested Anthropology as a compromise.

“Oh, yes, by all means,” exclaimed Dervish. “If he’s all that he’s cracked up to be, I’ll gladly take him on as a research aide. Not as a graduate student, of course. That would be a bit much, sending a Negro-Indian Professor off to represent the University at academic conferences and such, hee-hee,” giggled Walter.

That afternoon, at the interview, Evans proposed to Jorge that he begin his career at California University as an aide to Doctor Dervish in Anthropology. In a year or two, if all went well, they would give further consideration to his application for Graduate School in Philosophy.

“I’m not sure that I understand,” said Jorge. He was seated in a stiff-backed chair, facing Evans across his desk. Dervish sat in a cushioned chair to one side. On the floor at his feet stood a polished oaken case, with a reinforced leather handle, brass hinges and a latch.

“What is it that you don’t understand?” said Evans.

“Why I cannot begin my studies in philosophy immediately. Why must I work in Anthropology?” Jorge said in a soft, even voice.

“Well, frankly, Mr. Obregon, it’s a question of availability of opportunity at this time, as well as a limitation of funds.”

“But I understand that your University is publicly funded, and that at present there are only six graduate students in the Philosophy Department.” Jorge raised his voice in a questioning tone.

“Of course we are publicly funded,” said Evans, “but such funds are nonetheless limited, you see? Doctor Dervish, on the other hand, has been granted a stipend for a research aide. A quite handsome stipend, I might add.”

“Yes, quite,” said Walter. “And we are most interested in working with a man of your particular …eh … qualifications. Yes, indeed.”

“Why do you want a philosophy student in your Anthropology Department?” asked Jorge.

“Well, Mr. Obregon. Anthropology is the study of the human species, is it not?” Stanley interjected, “And what is philosophy, if not the highest manifestation of the reasoning abilities of that species, you see?”

“Yes, yes. Quite the case,” said Dervish, “Quite the case. I say. Would you mind if I took a few measurements, this afternoon. For research purposes? Just to give you an idea of the sort of thing we’re up to in Anthropology.”

“Measurements?” Jorge, caught off guard and confused by the question, did not respond further. Walter took his silence for assent, and opened his case of instruments.

“These are cranial calipers,” said Dervish, holding aloft an instrument of finely tooled brass. “We’ll also do some bodily measurements, if you don’t mind. Of course, you’ll have to disrobe for that. But we can do all of that after the interview, back in my laboratory. Would you like me to show you our facilities? I’m sure you’ll be quite favorably impressed.” Walter was nodding and smiling, glancing back and forth between Jorge and Stanley.

“Good day, Gentlemen,” said Jorge, rising from his stiff backed chair and leaving the room.

* * *

Two weeks later, Jorge took a train to Los Angels where he purchased a supply wagon and two sound mares for his recruitment tour of Jalisco State. He was carrying an official California Government Permit, allowing him to bring 20 Mexican citizens back with him across the border. He and Lazaro had made arrangements by mail and telegraph to interview workers in the villages of San Jacinto and Guadalupe. He selected twelve men, and checked their reputations carefully among the people of the barrios where they lived. Four of the men opted to bring their wives and children, so the expedition consisted of 19 souls plus Jorge, They would acquire their twentieth person quite by accident, on a beach in California, just north of Los Angeles.

BARBARIA installment 2

2009-10-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

BARBARIA, CHAPTER TWO

After his brother’s departure, Jorge was too agitated to sleep, so spent two hours at the secretary with his English translation of Nietzsche, reading by electric light. As so often happened with his reading, he encountered himself, and in this case his twin brother as well, on the page. The Teutonic aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil seemed to Jorge an abstraction of his tortured relationship with Raphael.

Since an afternoon under a brilliant sky when Raphael had been raped at the age of six on the bank of the Vera Cruz River, as Jorge watched in horror from his hiding place in the bushes, the boys had come to inhabit opposite worlds. Raphael had rapidly evolved into a warrior of rage. Arrigo, the roasted stallion, was an early victim of that rage, but not the main target. Jorge had always felt himself to be the true object of his brother’s fury, as the only living witness to the boy’s humiliation. What kind of a six-year-old brother, after all, would remain safely concealed and silent, at a time like that? The kind to be tied in a horse stall, and set afire. The assault had never been discussed between them, nor revealed by either child, nor by their thirteen-year-old companion, Theresa, who was also raped.

Jorge muttered to himself while reading, and took notes:

Good and Evil.
Raphael’s morality …
spawned in his heart by the sex organs of his violators …
they annihilated his will … tore it away with his trousers and his child’s sense of power …
since that moment R. defines good and evil by what he needs …

his need to redeem what was lost … personal power … dignity? There is none without power …
and me … what am I? A vessel of shame …

Jorge’s morality ….
Spawned in his heart by the sex organs of his brother’s violators

Nietzsche ….. philosopher of reality … nobility is victory … the way things are …. Hobbesian world … wolves …
more like slinking dogs, snarling over scraps from the dust bin …..

Josiah Royce.. California idealist … the way things could be, should be, might be, if ….

* * *

While Jorge struggled to interpret his world with the help of German philosophy, Lazaro lay naked upon his bed, up two flights, in the arms of a stranger; a stranger much younger than himself, who had already climaxed once, and was eager to go again.

Lazaro had been prolonging foreplay, postponing ecstasy in the manner of a seasoned veteran of debauch, with diminished powers of recovery. But this other fellow had a solid hold with his right hand on Lazaro’s penis, and a muscular lock around his waist with the left arm. Foreplay had apparently come to an end.

The youth was a kindly sort, sprawled on the bed, entangled in the duvet when they had finished, listening to the old man go on about his brother on the second floor, next wing, who was apparently queer also, but reluctant to face the fact.

“A lot of Mariannes in the priesthood, all right. Thought of it myself, for a time,” the fellow said, wanting to contribute. He was an immigrant from Naples, with thick lashes and large teeth, who laughed easily.

“I don’t know much detail,” said Lazaro, “But there was a hint of something in his letters. He was very fond of a certain priest, and mentioned the fellow’s ‘slender and delicate fingers’, as I recall, and something about the man’s soulful eyes and lips. It was the bit about the lips that convinced me.”

“Ah, yes, the lips. If a man talks about another man’s lips, he’s a fairy for certain. You can be sure of it!” exclaimed the Neapolitan.

“Jorge’s mother was a ravishing beauty,” Lazaro went on, “half African, half Indian. A stunning beauty, you know?”

“Oh yes, I know. Like me, of course. Am I not also a stunning beauty, eh?” He released a burst of laughter.

Lazaro moved to a window seat, crossed his legs and, still naked, began to smoke his pipe. Its bowl of embers bloomed in the dark, just enough to illuminate his smile. “I was sixteen when our father brought home his bride, and her mother, from the village of Santa Rita. I was jealous of her, that bride,” Lazaro said, eliciting another jovial outburst from his lover. “Oh, I know. How can a maricon be jealous over a woman, eh?” Lazaro continued, “ Well, I was just a kid, remember. She frightened me, really. And my sisters. We were afraid … with that beauty in the house, our father might cease to notice us.”

“Yes, we ‘stunning beauties’ have such an effect on people. Everybody is always so jealous of us.”

Lazaro grabbed a pillow from the floor and threw it at the youth, and asked, “So what do you think? Shall I ask him about it?” Lazaro said.

“About what? His beautiful mother?”

“No. I mean, should I ask my baby brother if he’s queer?”

The man sat upright on the bed and nearly shouted, “Of course not! No, you cannot talk about something like that with your young brother. Never can you talk about this with your family. No.”

* * *

Jorge’s head was nodding above his book. He poured water in the bedside basin and wiped his face with a cold cloth. He wanted to look over his notes once more, before retiring. He had made a heading and underlined it:

Raphael’s Secret.
Is it wise to keep this secret for years?

Just R’s secret or mine as well?

These new thinkers…Germans … psychological analysis … open it up!!!
The SUBCONSCIOUS MIND … needs to be opened up … YES OR NO ???
Time to talk to R? … about that day?

That horrible day … unspeakable day … unspoken day …

ask Lazaro? Tell Lazaro what happened?
Betray R. again? Couldn’t stop them …
did I betray him? … because I didn’t come out to get fucked as well?

Thought they were killing him …
would kill me as well …unspeakable … unspoken … fear.
Theresa died … finally …

There was a telephone in the hall outside Jorge’s room. He left his secretary and went to call the hotel desk, to ask about the schedule of Masses at the nearest Catholic church.

“Yes, thank you. First Mass at 6AM. Will you awaken me, then, at five? Thank you.”

The next morning, in a light spring rain, it was still dark when Jorge climbed into a cab and was carried a mile to a towering cathedral of adobe brick. As he had hoped, Jorge found the Sunday morning confessional fully operative, and even at 5:30 in the morning, he was obliged to queue up. He shivered in his raincoat, but not from the cold. This would be the first time he had ever attempted to describe the rape to another person, or even to himself. For most of his life he had lived with the images in his memory, but he had never transcribed the actual event into words. He hoped the priest would not insist upon graphic detail.

In the darkness of the curtained cubicle, Jorge was barely able to make out the confessor’s silhouette behind the grating. The accent was European. French, he thought. An older man, probably in his fifty’s or sixty’s. Jorge recited an obligatory list of transgressions since his last confession, and when the Frenchman asked if there were anything else, Jorge requested some advice.

“Of course, my son, what is it?”

“Years ago, Father, I saw a terrible thing happen to an innocent child.”

“Go on, son.”

“It was a despicable thing, Father, committed by two soldiers against a small boy, six years of age.” Jorge’s whisper was strong, but hesitant. His heart was pounding in his ears, so that he could barely hear his own voice.

“Did you know the boy?”

“Yes, Father, he was … he is … my brother.”

“What was your age at the time, Son?”

“I was also six. We are twins.”

“This thing that you saw the soldiers do to your brother; was it … ah … a sex thing?”

“Yes, Father, it was sexual.” Jorge was on the verge of weeping, but his voice remained strong and he didn’t sob. His nose began to run, however, and he perspired.

“Hmm … sex-u-al, yes. It happened to your twin brother, you say. And you saw … er … everything?”

Jorge paused to wipe his face with a handkerchief, and the priest repeated his question.

“Yes. Everything,” Jorge said.

“What did you do, my son? Did you, er, cry for help? Were there adults about?”

“Just Theresa,” Jorge said.

“Ah,” the priest responded, “And who was this, ah, this Therese?”

“Theresa. She was older. Thirteen. The soldiers raped her as well. They had knives and guns.”

“Ah, that is very sad. Very sad, indeed. Did they, er, hurt you also?”

“No. They didn’t see me. I was hiding.”

“Ah. And later, ah, did you report these men to the proper authorities? Did your parents report them to the police?”

“No, Father. None of us … talked about it. We never told anyone.”

“I see, I see. And this Theresa. That’s a Spanish name, no? She’s a Mexican?”

“She was Mexican, yes. She’s passed away, now. Years ago. She died of pneumonia.”

“How long has it been? How many years?”

“Since Theresa died?”

“No, no. I mean, since the … raping … happened.”

“Almost sixteen years, Father.”

“You said you wanted advice. What advice do you seek?”

“I … I have an older brother. I’m trying to decide if I should tell him what happened. That’s one thing. Also, my twin knows that I saw the attack, but we have never spoken of it. I’m wondering if I ought to talk to him about it now, after all this time.”

The priest remained silent for a few moments, collecting his thoughts, breathing laboriously. Then he spoke, “Under no circumstances, my child, should you say anything to anyone after so much time has passed. My advice to you, as your intermediary before God, is to maintain your silence.”

The priest took a moment to gather his thoughts, then continued,
“In truth, several mortal sins may have been committed, and not just by the soldiers. Perhaps this Mexican girl, Theresa, did something to tantalize or provoke the soldiers, you see? Maybe even your brother, himself, may have done so. You know how children are. And you; perhaps you ought to have interfered in some way to protect … my son, are you there? Eh?”

The priest could hear the sound of the supplicant exiting the confessional. When he was quite sure that the man had indeed departed, he muttered absolution in absentia, making the sign of the cross over the empty space behind the grate, where Jorge had been kneeling.

* * *

The next day, in a light, mid-morning rain, Lazaro and Jorge took a taxi to the train station for the three-hour trip to Vallejo. Most of the expanse of flat land to the southwest of Sacramento was used for growing barley and wheat, and during the first hour of travel they traversed monotonous miles of post-harvest stubble. Before reaching the railroad pass through the coastal hills on the valley’s western edge, however, they entered Vaca Valley, a region of fruit and nut orchards, alfalfa, and hillside vineyards.

“There’s your future home, if you’re so inclined,” said Lazaro, pointing to the northwest acreage. He wiped the steam from their compartment window, and Jorge peered into the distance.

“And what will I do out there among the trees, Hermano? Pick some white man’s apricots?”

“I thought you liked apricots,” said Lazaro.

“It’s the Irish farmers that give me gas,” Jorge grinned, “not to mention Irish lawyers. Why didn’t you take your mother’s name? Sven? At least I’m accustomed to Norwegians in the family.”

“My clients can’t pronounce it,” Lazaro laughed. “Listen, how about the cattle business? Or sheep? Your brothers-in-law are both excellent caballeros.”

“Tell me about my sisters, Lazaro, and about this town of Vallejo. Is that where I am to live?”

Lazaro explained that he and their two sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces all lived in Vallejo, where Lazaro had his law office. But the sisters wanted to buy some farmland in nearby Vacaville, and live together on a rancho. They had found something suitable, and were hoping to convince Jorge to join them in their enterprise.

“Thanks for the warning,” said Jorge, smiling. “You certainly look the part of a man of means, Brother. And I appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

Lazaro waved off the gratitude. “I’ve been fortunate, that’s all. A lucky capitalist, and the capital came from Father. When our land was seized in Mexico, I was able to liquidate sufficient assets to bring our sisters and their families here. Father had invested in a California manufacturing company years ago, and had provided me with a position on the board of directors. I was able to represent the firm legally, and soon started my own law practice.”

“As Lazarus O’Brien?”

“That’s right. Even a white man is excluded from doing most business in this state, if he’s Mexican, especially among the farmers. But many of the biggest names in mining and banking are Irish Catholic, so I adjusted the spelling a bit, and went after some choice agriculture accounts in the western valley. There was almost no competition at the time. So…”

“So we’re rich?” Jorge said. “You’re shameless, my brother.” He smiled to indicate he was joking, but Lazaro maintained a grave expression.

“No, not entirely,” Lazaro said, nearly mumbling. “But I have found it necessary to keep shame at arm’s length. How about you, little brother? Do you struggle with shame?”

Jorge looked puzzled. “I wasn’t criticizing you. I don’t care what your name is. I was just joking.”

“It’s just that you mentioned shame, Jorge, which happens to be a favorite topic of mine for philosophical discussion,” Lazaro said without smiling. “What do the philosophers say about shame?”

Jorge didn’t answer. He looked away.

“ Mi Hermanito ?”

“Wh..What do you…?”

“If I asked you to tell me about Rome, Jorge,” Lazaro said, “…about why you left the seminary…could you tell me the truth? The entire truth?” The men were sitting in a private, first class compartment that encompassed the width of the train. The cushioned chairs were bolted to the floor. Jorge stood up and walked to the windows on the opposite side of the car. The sun was trying to break through the clouds to the south, with little success. He watched a herd of deer, browsing in an oak grove. After a minute or two, he turned to face Lazaro.

“You mean the gossip? You’ve heard it all the way out here from Rome? And you believe it?”

“No, I’ve heard no gossip from Rome. Not a word,” Lazaro said. He rose, also, placed his hands behind his back, and began to pace the floor with the unsteady rhythm of the train, which was slowly climbing a long, straight incline, and to speak as though he were presenting a legal case to a jury.

“But let us suppose that I had heard some gossip, “Lazaro went on, “ Yes, some gossip of the worst kind; accusations of scandal; of licentious behavior on the part of my dearest brother. Can we suppose it?”

“You can suppose anything you want. Let’s change the subject of conversation, shall we? I’m weary of this topic.” Jorge sat again on a window bench.

Lazaro ignored the request, and continued to pace. “Then let us suppose that a certain world renowned American University had refused admission to my brother, based upon this gossip. If all of those suppositions were true, Jorge, do you think I would be ashamed of my brother?”

“Josiah Royce told you that I’ve been refused at Harvard because of what happened in Rome?”

Lazaro stopped pacing and stood beside the bed. The younger man’s chin fell to his chest. His shoulders slumped. “That was three years ago, Rome,” he said, “There was nothing official. I was assured there would be no record of the accusations in my file. They were even going to let me stay if I wanted. It was my decision to leave. It doesn’t make sense.” Jorge began to shake his head, repeating that it made no sense.

“Jorge, The Professor didn’t mention Rome or scandal or gossip.”

Jorge looked up. “What, then? What are you telling me?”

Lazaro sat down on the bench beside Jorge and leaned against him. “I was just guessing, Jorge. About your problems in Rome.”

“Guessing? How … ?”

“You’ve been living in London for several years, Jorge. Surely you know of Oscar Wilde? ‘The love that dares not say its name?’ Do you know what I am talking about?”

Jorge looked away and said nothing.

“I have decided to make a confession to you, my brother. I am a man who loves men, Jorge,” Lazaro said, “I have guessed that you are the same, that’s all I’m telling you.”

After a full minute of silence, Jorge spoke, “I have more important things on my mind, Lazaro, than my bodily needs. I have decided to keep my attention focused upon things which I deem much more important. I don’t want to discuss the other, and would appreciate it if we could just drop the entire subject.”

Lazaro put his arm around the young man’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “As you wish, Little Brother.”

BARBARIA installment 1

2009-10-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

My novel, BARBARIA, was released by PublishAmerica in August, 2009, but the company has seen fit to price the book out of reach for normal people. The retail price (at Amazon and PubAm) ranges from $29 to $34 per copy with shipping. The company's marketing strategy is to focus on the author as customer, but I can seldom afford even their "discounted" prices.

So I've decided to serialize the book on this blog for you to read. Please let me know what you think, and if you want a discounted copy, I have some available for $14, direct sale, not including shipping. Email if you're interested: brennan.don@gmail.com
Thanks, Don

SYNOPSIS: The setting for the tale is nineteenth century California, 1880's & 1890's. Three brothers of the Obregon family have immigrated to California from Mexico. Jorge and Raphael are identical twins of maternal African-Indian descent. Lazaro, their elder half-brother is caucasian and, with forged documents, assumes an Irish identity as Lazarus O'Brian. He aids Jorge to set up a labor camp while Raphael, always the rebel, seeks his own fortune in the highly profitable sex trade. Frances, an Irish-American woman and the adopted daughter of Lazarus, is married to a merchant seaman. A murder is committed and justice is denied to the Obregons through the dynamics of corruption and racism. The brothers conspire to take certain risks to avenge their losses.

NOTE: "Barbaria" is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, indicating one character's nickname for California, The Land of the Barbarians.

BARBARIA

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

On the ship from London, even though he had paid in advance for a first class cabin, the vessel’s captain ordered Senor Obregon, Cambridge scholar and heir to extensive land holdings in the New World, to cross the Atlantic in the hold, “ with the rest of the niggers.” For six days and nights, Jorge had been crammed into the vessel’s crowded lower regions with Russian, Irish and Italian peasants, and not a self respecting negro in the lot, except himself; the only one in steerage who could actually claim an African grandparent. The European huddled masses, with Jorge in their midst, slept on the bloody floor or on wooden bloody benches, shit in slop buckets, and ate moldy food, while dozens of sick children cried throughout the nights and vomited without warning.

Standing today on Depot Street in Sacramento, California, U.S.A., Jorge Obregon itched all over, as though the fabric of his underclothing had been spun from sand. A swarm of microscopic vermin had surely taken residence beneath his skin. He smelled like a rancid cheese, and his neck seemed to have stiffened at an acute angle from the rest of his body. If he didn’t get into a tub soon, he could never again be assured of viewing the world in any other way than on a slant.

He fished two coins from his trouser pocket and thanked the porter in Spanish, who shouted up to the cab driver in English, “No rough ride for this gentleman, you hear? He’s a generous man, and he’s from my country!”

“Ah, go on. You Mexicans just stick together. Probably won’t give me but a nickel.”

“What’s the fare?” Jorge stood on a wooden sidewalk and squinted at the driver. The sun was high in the southwest and the trees on the street were mere twigs, recently planted. The road in front of the railroad station was paved and filled with buggies and commercial wagons. Obregon was pleased about the pavement, having heard rumors that city streets of the Far West were better suited to the needs of wallowing hogs than gentleman travelers.

“Seventy five cents to the Grosvenor.”

“OK, then. A dollar for a smooth ride, but if you jar any teeth loose, I take your horse in compensation.”

“Hell, Mister, for two dollars you can buy the rig and drive yourself.”

Jorge settled into a cushioned leather seat and waved goodbye to the porter. It was The Ides of March 1888, and he had been on the train for seven days and six nights, reading Nietzsche. Probably some symbolic connection there; the dark Ubermensch arrives in California on the date that Caesar fell under the assassins’ knives; perhaps an ill omen. He hoped it did not portend more exclusion problems at the end of his journey. He wanted a deep, hot bath and a real bed with a goose-down comforter. For more than two weeks he had been pilloried and humiliated by the white god-damned Ubermensch of Great Britain and America, both on land and at sea, and had had quite enough of it.

In New York Harbor, the Immigration sods had kept him for twenty four hours in their “cattle barn” before they would even talk to him, or so much as glance at his papers. When he finally arrived in Boston for his interview at Harvard, The Hotel Dunsmuir management made him sleep on tick and canvas in the servant’s quarters. A rough woolen blanket, no heat, and a coldwater basin.

Of course, after all of this inconvenience, Professor Royce had been pained to give him the bad news. Jorge’s application for admission to the Harvard University Graduate School of Philosophy had been refused. That bit had depressed and discouraged him of course, but at the same time he had been glad for any excuse to exit himself from Boston.

Jorge’s train accommodations across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains had been posh by comparison to both the ship and the Dunsmuir Hotel. He hadn’t been allowed in a sleeping car, but at least had been able to bribe the conductor for a private seating compartment. Now, he wanted a hot bath. If he did not get one, he would show these California provincials an avenging Mexican in action. Purchase a pistol, perhaps, and dispatch the Grosvenor Bell Captain. Shoot him first, then seek out the rest of the managerial staff, and tend to them as well. He would rather be strung up by one of their infamous lynch mobs than pass another night without a bath.

The Sacramento afternoon was cool, and Jorge tucked the woolen taxi blanket around his legs. He wore a dark serge suit with a celluloid collar and a black silk cravat, held with a diamond pin. He was clean shaven, and his tightly curled black hair was trimmed to collar length and neatly combed, barely showing the indentation of a bowler hat, which now rested beside him on the seat. Jorge retrieved his watch from a vest pocket. Storms on the Kansas plains and in the mountains of Colorado had delayed his arrival by twelve hours. The late afternoon sun was slanting through the windows on his right. He averted his eyes from the glare and observed the Californians, crowding the sidewalks. The Barbarians, he and his English friends called them.

His route from the railroad station was through a neighborhood of three and four story hotels and tenements. The pedestrians were mostly men in plain workers’ clothing, but business suits were in evidence, as well as women shopping with their children. Jorge took comfort from observing a number of dark faces in the throng, but suspected correctly that as he was carried farther from the station, color would fade.

“You’ll find yourself quite at home out there,” his dorm mate, Tuck, had said to encourage him, “All dark skinned folk that far west, you know. Wild Indians, going about with their feathered bonnets.” Tuck, staring through thick, round eyeglass lenses, spoke with the authority of one who considered a vast knowledge of Homer and Herodotus all that was truly necessary for a civilized gentleman. “Yes, yes. You’ll get on famously in Barbaria, I’m sure. Might want to add a few feathers to your wardrobe, eh?”

Jorge’s older brother, Lazaro (or “Lazarus”, as he now preferred) had, assured Jorge by mail that The Grosvenor was accommodating to international guests of every hue and culture, and that he would not encounter the sort of crude behavior that he had been forced to put up with in Boston.

Indeed, as Lazaro had promised, Jorge’s cab was not diverted from the front to the back door of the hotel, and he was allowed to enter the main lobby and register at the desk like a proper human being. Another Mexican Porter hoisted his bags, and he was led to his second floor quarters by a courteous white bellman, apparently Australian, who even lit the water heater, explaining in detail how to successfully draw a bath. Jorge responded with a tip that was more than generous, and restrained himself from falling to the floor and kissing the fellow’s feet.

The Grosvenor was a first class hotel, catering to an international elite, who, according to Brother Lazaro, visited California in substantial numbers for reasons of business and politics. Jorge had indeed observed a group of jovial Chinese men in the lobby, chattering away in their hilarious language with braided hair, wearing gowns. The multistoried building was designed and constructed in a Spanish style U shape, resembling a large California Mission, and reminding Jorge of Italy. The grounds were landscaped with a mix of fruit trees, cypress, lilies and dahlia. There was a central garden with graveled walkways, and benches located in groves. There were, however, no statues of saints or crucifixes in evidence, and the heart of the Spanish garden finally gave way to England in the form of an elaborate Victorian gazebo, painted white and trimmed in forest green. After his bath, he hoped to take Nietzsche to the gazebo.

Jorge removed his coat, tie and collar, then unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and began to unpack. He had just finished hanging his shirts and suits in an armoire, when there was a rap at the door. He went quickly to respond, expecting a note from his older brother, whom he had not seen since childhood. He pulled open the door, and there was the brother in the flesh, a white man in his mid-fifties, medium height, thinning hair, and the blue-gray eyes of their father.

“Lazaro!” Jorge shouted, “Is it you? Is it really you?” The two men grinned and embraced. Lazaro had tears in his eyes as he held his brother at arms’ length and studied him with some amazement.

“Ahhh. What happened to El Pequeno? Where did he go, that sweet little child?”

“Well, he’s struggling to become a man of letters, now, isn’t he? Almost a philosopher, some would say,” Jorge blushed. “But he also itches and stinks. Please allow me to bathe before we visit, lest you become infested with my lice.”

The two walked arm in arm toward the bathroom. A writing desk with pens, paper, an inkwell and two chairs, stood by a west window. Lazaro grabbed one of the chairs, “May I sit by your tub and supervise the ablutions? Let me remove my coat. I’ll even give your back a scrub. Do you remember those days?”

“I do indeed. Raphael and I used to give you a good soaking for your trouble. Auntie would always chide you,” said Jorge, peeling off his shirt. Raphael was Jorge’s identical twin brother. The pair was born in Lazaro’s twentieth year, to their father’s second wife.

“Yes, yes. She would always tell me to just disrobe and join you two rascals in the tub, but I felt it important to remain fully clothed; to maintain my authority while you soaked me through to the skin.”

Jorge turned on the water and sprinkled a generous handful of scented salts into the tub. “Let me fill this tub and call for coffee and something to eat,” he said. The room filled with steam and heady fragrances of lavender and orange blossoms.

“I’ve ordered food and drink already,” responded Lazaro, settling his stout frame onto the chair, “Cold beef, white bread, and a bottle of red wine made by Italian immigrants. The California National Dish!”

Jorge stripped and stepped into the tub, then lowered himself into the churning water with a great, luxurious sigh. “Marvelous!”

“So. It’s Senor Philosopher, now, is it Mi Hermano?” Lazaro asked, “How was your meeting with the venerable Dr. Royce?”

“I’ve been rejected by Harvard,” Jorge said, frowning, and squeezing a sponge over his head, “and I feel bad about that. But my meeting with Royce was thrilling, perhaps the high point of my life. Well, my intellectual life, at any rate. This bath is the high point of my entire life.”

Lazaro reached over and gripped the younger man’s arm. “ Tell me more about this meeting of the philosophers. Tell me more.”

“I don’t think I can really put it into words,” Jorge said after splashing about and reflecting for a moment, “He’s a man of great warmth and intelligence, and he complimented my writing. That’s what I liked best about him. He complimented my writing. He also told me that, in his opinion, Harvard’s committee on Graduate Admissions are a pack of racial bigots, and that my color is probably the only reason for my exclusion. ”

“Yes. He thinks your something of a shining star on the horizon of metaphysics. I believe that’s how he put it. He wrote to me, you know. I received his letter just two days ago.” Lazaro’s light brown hair was curled around his ears, and turning white at the temples. He wore the customary dark suit of a man of the legal profession, and a silk vest of gray and blue stripe. He wore a darker gray cravat, also pinned in place with an expensive diamond. Their father’s custom, passed on to the sons. Some had called the old man El Diamante, and he had adored the name.

“No, I didn’t know!” Jorge jerked his head about and looked at his brother through foaming eyelashes, “Josiah Royce wrote to you? About me?”

“Yes, among other things. He owns property out here, and I do some legal work for the gentleman. But primarily, he wrote about you. Most importantly about you.”

Jorge’s eyes widened, then scrunched tightly, stinging from the soap. He drenched his face and attempted to speak at the same time, “But…but…pero…”

Lazaro laughed aloud. “At this moment, you have the look of a small boy in the bath who has no command of the King’s English. How can that be? Dr. Royce says that you’re an articulate young man of amazing intellect!”

“He said that? He said that?”

There was another knock on the door, and Lazaro went to greet room service while his youthful brother attempted to submerge in a six-inch bath, and to recover from a mild state of shock. But the man was too excited, now, to lie about in perfumed waters. He raised himself, dripping, and stepped out onto a heavy, braided rug. When Lazaro re-entered the bathroom, Jorge ambushed him with a damp sponge, a direct hit to the chest. For over two hours, the two ate and talked and studied one another. This was Jorge’s first visit to California. Lazaro had come with a forged Irish passport in the 1866, and the entire Obregon family moved there from Vera Cruz in the ‘70s and ‘80s, except for Jorge, who was a student at Cambridge College, England.

“How long have you been in California?” Jorge asked him, “Are you actually citizen of this country? Do they let Mexicans become citizens?”

“Twenty two years, now,” he answered, “Papa had extensive holdings here when it was still Mexico, you know. But we lost all of the land, and had to start over. And I am a citizen, but only because they think I came from Ireland.”

“Ah, yes. Lazarus O’Brian, I presume?”

“You know what else?” he went on, “ I haven’t seen you since Papa’s funeral. Do you remember? You and that rascal twin of yours had just turned fourteen. What a pair.”

“How is my Raphael? He never writes letters. Auntie wrote that he had moved to some cow town somewhere.”

“Ah, no, Hombre. It’s a farming town called Vacaville. The Vacas were a Mexican family who owned a huge ranch there before the war. Our father knew them well. Raphael is doing all right, I guess. We don’t see him very often. He lives on the edge of the law, still. I don’t think he plans on changing his bandido ways.”

“My twin brother a criminal! What the hell is he doing, robbing banks? Am I in danger of arrest by mistaken identity? ” Jorge’s relaxed smile disappeared. A wave of anxiety dried his throat quite suddenly, causing his voice to crack, so that he sounded a bit like a chicken, guarding her eggs.

Lazaro attempted an abrupt change of subject. “Did you read the Bancroft history? Your professor friend used to study with Bancroft, you know.”

Jorge had been studying in Europe for five years, supported by Lazaro. Four years in England, interrupted midway by an ill-fated year of seminary in Rome. At Cambridge, he had attended several guest lectures by Josiah Royce, a prominent American philosopher, who was roundly criticized, even ridiculed, for his anachronistic idealism by the resident faculty. Jorge didn’t think much of Cambridge orthodoxy, and found himself enthralled by the American’s outrageously romantic view of social history. He had written Royce, and included in the letter a few comments, connecting the Harvard professor’s ideas with those of Rousseau and Marx. Royce, born in California during the Gold Rush, was intrigued by Jorge’s family connections, as well as by the youth’s philosophical leanings. He invited the young man to visit him at Harvard, and recommended the Bancroft History, which Jorge had read, forthwith.

“Yes, he provided me with an advance copy of the first volume. He told me that he’s working on a history himself. I’m enthused also. I’ve never been interested in the Wild West, until now. At school, we call this place ‘Barbaria’ …” Jorge’s voice drifted into silence. He had trained himself over the years to stop worrying about Raphael. Since Jorge had left for England in 1883, the twins had had virtually no contact. For the first several months, Jorge had written regularly, but without response. Their older sister, Natividad, whom they called ‘Auntie’, would only mention Raphael in vague and general terms when she wrote to Jorge: “ Raphael is fine. His health is good. Came by with a senorita. Still not married.”

“Barbaria, is it?” Lazaro interjected, snapping Jorge out of his trance. “ Land of the Barbarians? Oh, that’s a good one.”

“Lazaro, please. Tell me about Raphael.”

Lazaro shook his head and sighed. “We are three strange brothers, aren’t we, Hermano?”

Jorge remained silent. He couldn’t help feeling frightened. His carefully constructed defenses were slipping, preparing to tumble like the proverbial walls of Jericho. The truth about Raphael threatened to be God’s avenging clarion, and he felt he would be crushed under the impact. He stood up from his chair and crossed the room to the bed, and sat down again.

“Do you remember Arrigo?” Jorge said.

“Arrigo? Ah, you must mean the horse. Yes, yes. Father wrote me a long letter about that, years ago. He felt very guilty about sending Raphael away for killing that horse. Poor father. He really did love his children more than his horses. You can’t say the same for all men, can you?”

“Our brother was tormented, Lazaro. A tormented child,” said Jorge. “I worry about him … that … I don’t know … that he suffers too much, I suppose.”

At the age of eleven the twins’ father had taken the boys into the horse barn to witness the breeding of a mare. The children watched in silence as a caballero held a haltered mare and Father led the agitated Arrigo to mount the female from behind and penetrate her with his mighty, meter-long erection. Before dawn the following morning, Raphael tied their father’s prized and beloved stallion in the barn and started a fire in the creature’s stall, cooking the beast to a crisp. That same week, Don Castillo Guzman Obregon had his son taken away to a Carmelite monastery in the hills above Mexico City, and confined to a cell for nearly a year. After that, Raphael became cautious and more discreet, but never penitent.

“Ah, you worry too much, my brother,” said Lazaro, “Listen to me. Raphael knows very well how to take care of himself. These gringos would make him sweat in the fields for fifteen cents a day, but he laughs in their faces. He wears fine clothes, has plenty of money, and white men protect him from their own police. Don’t worry about Raphael.”

For all of their lives, since they were small children, Raphael had been the center of the family’s attention, because he was constantly in trouble. Jorge had spent his childhood trying everything in his power to get his brother to change. In the end, nothing had worked, not even incarceration.

“I’ve thought about it often, Lazaro. I talked to my confessor at Cambridge about it many times.” Jorge said.

“The stallion?” Lazaro laughed gently. “You spoke to a priest about your twin brother cooking your father’s horse?”

Jorge smiled in spite of himself.

“You told the priest that if you had done the cooking, you would have seasoned the meat first, is that it?” Lazaro roared. Jorge collapsed backwards on the bed, giggling. But tears came to his eyes, and the laughter faded into silence.

“Three strange brothers,” Lazaro repeated. “One white, two dark. One old, two young. One businessman, one intellectual, one criminal. You’re the philosopher, Jorge. What was God thinking when he sent us three into this world, bound together by the blood of our father?”

Jorge didn’t respond. He sat up, trembling slightly, wiping his tears. Lazaro knelt before the young man with a glass of wine, and held it to his lips. Jorge took the glass and drank it down.

“So, my little Indian brother.” Lazaro took a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Jorge. “You know, your mother was perhaps the most beautiful woman in all of Vera Cruz. And your African grandmother! Ah, what a woman. Escaped from a slave ship. She used to tell us such stories. Cruel and beautiful stories, in that singsong accent. We couldn’t understand half of her words, but we never tired of listening.”

“I remember her,” Jorge said, barely above a whisper. “I have memories of following her along the street, holding on to her skirt. I can still see the bright colors of her dresses in my mind. And I remember her death. Auntie was comforting Raphael and me. She told us that Mamou was going to be with our mother in Heaven.”

“Yes, that’s the sort of thing we tell children, isn’t it? To alleviate their pain.”

“It frightened me. I had never seen my mother, and when Auntie said that, I knew I would never see Mamou again. I remember reaching across in front of Raphael and grabbing the crocheted bedspread. I locked my fingers in the holes of the spread and wouldn’t let go. I was trying to keep our Grandmother out of Heaven.”

Lazaro leaned over Jorge and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re exhausted, young man. You need sleep. Stop all of this brooding, and get into bed. I’ll come for you around noon tomorrow, and we’ll take the train to Vallejo.”

DAVID LOY

2009-05-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Professor David Loy of Xavier University, Cincinnati, was interviewed by Inquiring Mind for its 25th anniversary issue, Spring 2009. (Inquiring Mind is available, free, at the San Francisco Zen Center (Page & Laguna), among other places.) Here is Professor Loy’s opening statement:

“Is the current financial and economic crisis a good thing? I wouldn’t want to minimize the suffering it’s creating for many people, but the world economy is an unjust system, and absolutely unsustainable. If we don’t know how else to transform it, maybe it’s better that it collapse sooner rather than later so as to lessen the long-range impact both on people and on the biosphere. Our ecomomic system is devastating the Earth. The financial losses from this collapse may amount to several trillions of dollars, but who can compute the value of the rain forests we have been cutting down? What price do you put on species extinction or global warming?”

OBJECTIONABLE CONTENT

2009-02-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

MINUTEMAN PROJECT
© Don Brennan

A few unnoticed kids
playing beside a dusty road

A couple of men in jeans and
work boots amble by, talk loud
about the God damned Mexicans

Some stuff how they keep coming
take jobs and welfare, God damn.

Two girls and three boys playing
on a back road a few miles
north of the border

Two light skinned, three dark
laughing, acting silly as
eight or nine or ten year olds
left to themselves

Scratching and digging at dry dirt
with sticks outside a small house
while somebody’s mother
fixes lunch.

God damned unnoticed
children all hearing clearly
the curse of the passersby.

IGNORAMUS MUNDI
© Don Brennan

Ignorance needs no excuse; a precondition for knowledge said Socrates

Wisdom’s fueling juice

The brick-heads among us often sing in the choir

Grace the ‘old rich’ salon

Share chicken parts around the cook-fire

The ignoramus dwells ubiquitous as sin behind a cunning mask

And seldom has a problem blending in

Welcomed by the middle class and working poor

Cozy, too, with serial killers
(Especially the corporate and military kind)

And whoremongers, literal and metaphorical, pimping every con

Offering both sacred and profane to any willing john.

Folks send kids to school to learn and earn degrees

While Harvard and Yale hand them out to profiteering sleaze

Religious fundamentalists have their own universities

And just to give the point some grease

Sweden once awarded Kissinger
a Nobel Prize for peace.

No need to feel dismay, It’s just the way things tend to be

The precondition for every stripe of truth is, well, you know the homily:

If the bull weren’t hungry he wouldn’t walk a country mile

Snuffle through the hay and add his contribution to the pile.

OUR SOFT SKINNED
DOWNY WARRIORS

Send them all away
the downy maidens
and soft skinned
boys dressed in colors
of winter afternoons
where even the sun
struggles to light the way,

Send them all along their
downy soft skinned paths
to greatness and hope.

Remember to tell them
not to worry about coming
home too early or too late,

For the very brave with
urgent business abroad
need not concern themselves with trivia,

With details of lives left forever behind.

Think only of the future,
tell them that and all the
starry promises you’ve
made in our names,

Remind them all to dream
their nights away with
heroic deeds before their
eyes grow dim,

So dim they’ll
never see again,

Have you told them that?

NOONDAY BELLS
© Don Brennan

Now the noonday bells
Are ringing

Where were they
When I needed them?

Dosing on my meditation
Pillow in pre-dawn
Disappointment

Lost again
Without a single sign
from Heaven

I know as well as you
We’re not allowed to ask

For winks and whispers
Across light years

To tell us
What we think we
Need to know

The candle blinks and
Shimmies within the
Confines of her flame

That should be enough
To comfort us
In our dark hours

She, the sign of Kali
Is all the symbol that we
Need informing us on the

Zazu in total crackling
Silence that we
Like her

Are vessels full and
Brimming with desire

But…but…

In moments of samsara
Tangled in Maya’s web
The arachnid goddess

Initiates conflagration

We destroy everything
Within human reach

Of course desire
All the while
Screaming

For the noonday bells.

MOURNING OSCAR GRANT
© Don Brennan

Have you ever
seen a powerless
woman standing

chin on chest in
someone’s absence?

Someone who lies
beneath a stacked up
mound of earth

smelling fresh
newly turned

Makes you want to
steal a gravedigger’s
shovel

lean it out of sight
behind that
invisible curtain

up against a leg
trembling to remain
standing

the sufferer might
do some digging

maybe you could
take over when
she gets weary

help bring her
child out of that
hole

just for a
little while

time for one more
prayer, maybe a
kiss to be sure

the soul gets free

takes to the air.

FIRST AID
© Don Brennan

What else can we do
who can’t help but
snuffle like hound dogs
on the trail of Hell

Heaving for air in this
thicket where we find
ourselves

Waking up
at the strangest hours

Shivering in a
blind fog

Nothing but our noses
to lead us on

What else
can we do?

Seekers we are called
suckers for the dumb
dog scent of fantasy

Sniffing out an ancient
recollection sometimes
called compassion

More often delusion

We try to push aside
thorn and branch

Ignore our hemorrhaged
minds, where else can we turn?

To the part of us that
is not a part of this
nor a part of that?

First aid
for the part of us that
is the whole of us?

Some knowledge of
compassion
for each one of us?

The knowledge that compassion

Not delusion

Is who we are?

TENDERLOIN ANTHOLOGY January 2009

2009-01-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

TRACKS
WINTER 2008 – 09
LEAVENWORTH STREET ANTHOLOGY #5
LINOLEUM CUT BY MARSHA CAMPBELL

WAITING by Marsha Campbell

A woman lay in her small bed.
It was hardly big enough to contain her.
Her feet stuck out at the bottom edge.

She looked out the window
but the window looked out
on little piles of trash.

No light came in. It was morning
but it could have been midnight.
She closed her eyes but her mind opened them.

She knew she had to get up.
She had to take a pill or she would be nervous.
She had to dress and look presentable

Because she was going to the Center.
The Center where old people like herself would show up.
Lucky, she caught a bus right away.

She sat uneasily at the Center
coloring pictures of flowers and of Isis
wife of the god Osiris.

She thought of a man far away
who had, like Odysseus
left Penelope behind--

a woman who weaved a work every day
and every night tore it apart.
She was like that woman.

She would wait.

A POET RAINED ON
AFTER THE WAR
by Charles Blackwell

Tip toe
bare footed hungry
pioneer of dreams deferred.

Roll on in, massage
our feeble fickle minds
with arched over words
Heaven bound.

I see you stepping
over to the neighboring
planet, larger than life.

Causeway to the New American Pyramid
by Ray Valdez

After all Alpine glaciers
and polar mountains of ice,
veritable Bach cathedral fuges,
decrescendo
into a collapsing world,
flames exploding at the edges;

And after rearing-up,
ever-rising seas,
incessant cyclones
level whole cities;

And the air is swollen
with non-Biblical lotus swarms:
oil-black pollution;

And after seasons
switch sequences;

And knarled rotted roots
of upside-down trees
swim a neon-pink sky
to the bloated sun;

And honey bees
are giving up their ghosts
in their own little Ghost Dance,
no longer pollinate
what is a boiling hot,
hurricane swept planet;

CARNIVAL STRANGERS DANCE
by Dominique Leslie
With a mocha flavored kiss
And a hand on my big ass
He danced up to me
Like a boat pulling into her berth
Lively carnival dancers in
Flesh and flashing sequins
Boogied past marching
Marimba musicians
My African print handkerchief skirt
Whirled loosely around me
He pulled me closer in the dance
I could see his gold teeth
In the flickering light
The crowd of dancers and
Drummers separated us
Like an ocean sweeping sand from the beach out to sea
Before long I was blocks away
In the Zona Verde
Where I ate a tamale
And a strawberry fresco.

DEFAULT

2009-01-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

INAUGURAL DEFAULT
© Don Brennan

default
back to where we couldn’t
get away fast enough

default
the rich stand on our necks

on one another’s shoulders
better to view their carnage

reach like dead people to
dance in one another’s

arms at inaugural balls
cuffs rolled
gowns hiked up

out of the sanguinary mess
at their feet

default
couldn’t get away

default
too slow

GAZA NEW YEAR FESTIVAL
©Don Brennan

military theory has indicated
you can take more accurate
aim on the ground and kill
more children in the streets
with bullet spray than canon
fire and also the troops are
getting restless, hungry for
the close up taste of blood,
want to hear the pain in outcry,
see death’s dread in maternal
eyes, collect souvenirs, after
all it’s only fair to let the bully
boys have a little fun, they’ve
been patient and conscientious
for days and days of bombing,
shelling, of having to satisfy
blood lust with cries in the
distance, it’s time to see, taste,
touch and smell, rape some girls
and boys, take a few scalps.

LI PO: from HIS DREAM OF HEAVEN (SKYLAND): 755 CE

…So with all pleasures of life.
All things pass with the east-flowing water.
I leave you and go—when shall I return?
Let the white roe feed at will among the green crags,
Let me ride and visit the lovely mountains!
How can I stoop obsequiously and serve the mighty ones!
It stifles my soul.

ISRAEL GOES GAZA, SIT IT OUT

2008-12-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

USED TO BE HUMAN
©Don Brennan

When did ennui lope from the audience onto center stage, become the lynch pin for human affection, replace the heart with a faulty blood pump, grind stones into knife points for lust’s consummation?

When did we invent “those people”, the ones who don’t deserve to live, and when did slavery become a good idea, a pathway to comfort and wealth, to a higher standard of exploitation?

When did we learn to betray the trust of ancestors, to scorn our children’s fate, to delight in universal pain, to take pride in the enemy’s body count?

When did we learn to displace our humanity and to fill the consequent void with shame?

SIT OUT
©Don Brennan

Guess I’d like to sit a while, turn my thoughts to places beyond the moon, to places beneath the brain’s membranes

Where the powerful are less ugly, where blood flows to nourish life not eliminate it

Someplace outside the lunar circle where Gaza’s screams are finding their way through the void

As though the nebulae might know of other ways to define compassion

I’d like to sit this out a while

Out in the streets in the center of rush hour traffic would be good, nebulous thought lost in irate blaring horns, screeching brakes

Anything to drown out Gaza screaming, Congo tears, Iraqi rage, Afghanistan gasping for her final breath,

Sit it out in the streets, no more marching, just sit, hands joined, all of us humanists engaged in a global sit out.

POST MODERN NATURE WALK

2008-12-28T14:14:00.000-08:00

THE CLEARING
©Don Brennan

One comes upon them often
opening the canopy

making way for daylight
to dance upon rocks, for

deer and mice to poke noses
out of tree trunk shelter,

allowing rabbits to cavort,
fawns to celebrate their youth.

Mothers anxiously hesitate as
eagles circle downward
preparing to dive.

This particular clearing in a
forest under attack is pocked

by stumps and piles of bare
bulldozed tire tracked earth

The doe hangs back in shadow
keeping, her fawn at her side.

Daylight’s dance is lethargic, the
eagle remains high.

Rabbits, even mice, stay away.

three poems by deborah wenzel

the flower

tearing it apart

leaf by

leaf

i look for

the answer

and discover

it isn't

there.

untitled

in so many ways, i feel a fool to the world.

but, at the same time, i feel i could help.

how does one reconcile?

there is so much i feel i could do.

perfume

only the perfume from this flower

lingers in the air.

i am a buddha sitting in the cool shade

of this hidden garden.

my circles ripple out,

they are sleeping in the sun.

© deborah wenzel

Mark Twain's War Prayer

2008-12-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

WAR PRAYER (excerpt) by Mark Twain, 1904, during the war against The Phillipines.

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

FRAGMENT FROM
THE MEXICO CITY
ZOCALO
© Don Brennan

nameless shaman
burning sage up

unnamed
nasal highways

into what remains
of brains

left too long away
from flirting sunlight

fleeting twilight
sage and midnight

left too long needing
soft desert winds

the whiff of sage scent
on a soul search

swirling peace
understanding

sacred smoke
on a mission

a healing mission
seducing demons

convincing evil
to be kind

to curl up as in
the womb again

convincing evil to
let go of itself

seducing demons
to rise with the smoke

to rise towards
compassion.

DALAI LAMA, half-Marxist
Quoted from the Wikipedia article: The Fourteenth Dalai Lama (under the heading, “Economics”):

“Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes—that is, the majority—as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair. I just recently read an article in a paper where His Holiness the Pope also pointed out some positive aspects of Marxism.

“As for the failure of the Marxist regimes, first of all I do not consider the former USSR, or China, or even Vietnam, to have been true Marxist regimes, for they were far more concerned with their narrow national interests than with the Workers' International; this is why there were conflicts, for example, between China and the USSR, or between China and Vietnam. If those three regimes had truly been based upon Marxist principles, those conflicts would never have occurred.

“I think the major flaw of the Marxist regimes is that they have placed too much emphasis on the need to destroy the ruling class, on class struggle, and this causes them to encourage hatred and to neglect compassion. Although their initial aim might have been to serve the cause of the majority, when they try to implement it all their energy is deflected into destructive activities. Once the revolution is over and the ruling class is destroyed, there is not much left to offer the people; at this point the entire country is impoverished and unfortunately it is almost as if the initial aim were to become poor. I think that this is due to the lack of human solidarity and compassion. The principal disadvantage of such a regime is the insistence placed on hatred to the detriment of compassion.

“The failure of the regime in the former Soviet Union was, for me, not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.”

IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, PALESTINE ...

2008-12-23T10:27:00.000-08:00

CAUGHT PRAYING
© Don Brennan

Now you’ve caught me
in the thistle patch
listening at your church’s
door to your dead hearts’
thumping rage against those
whom you say trespass
against you.

Caught you offering innocence
to a violent God, take, eat these
infidel blown-apart children
whom we chew up in your holy
name, spitting out the pieces at
the Almighty’s stinking feet.

Prayers? Mere orgasmic shadows
rising from shameful altars in
cluster bomb clouds
blood lust and greed,
bigotry and hate,

Our enemy’s bodies piling up
to Heaven, halleluiah
in the names of the
In-God-We-Trust-USA.

BAIL OUT THIS

2008-12-19T12:03:00.000-08:00

POINTED QUESTIONS FOR WALL STREET
© Don Brennan

When did you become anxiety’s answer to every question, a deity in bare feet, no rings, waiting to be kissed on your hairy knuckle?

When did you rise upon your toes shaking inflamed eye-sockets, hands pushed down in our pockets demanding retribution?

Flesh will do as well as chicken wings or a pound of cash dripping grease from crippled hearts struggling to pump their last bits of blood in your direction.

Just when did you mistake your crumbling liver for a death’s head’s bleached bone, the empty infested hole where your nose used to be for power over me?

So your greed has forever been my nemesis born of breath’s contractions, since we were born together at time’s beginning.

But we both know time has no beginnings, has never had to sniff down hound dog trails looking for purposes and ends, we both know.

But you alone know why you need to lie, need your dose to get high, why you need to remain insane, not I.

Inaugural Jitters

2008-12-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

AIN’T BEEN THIS HAPPY
© Don Brennan

Now I know why
the greater good
has been keeping me
alive all these years so

I’d be here to see
Obama win that thing

Be here to hear a
political speech by a
Democrat that
I’ve been able to
believe since Bobby
Kennedy George
McGovern and Jesse
Jackson were sealed off

Ain’t we so tired of
liars and cowards, ain’t
we happy now for
intelligence, compassion
and courage for a
change in a nation’s
history.

A change in a nation’s
direction into the four
directions, slouching
towards democracy.

BORDER PATROL
© Don Brennan

A few unnoticed kids
playing beside a dusty road

A couple of men in jeans and
work boots amble by, talk loud
about the God damned Mexicans

Some stuff how they keep coming
take jobs and welfare, God damn.

Two girls and three boys playing
on a back road a few miles
north of the border

Two light skinned, three dark
laughing, acting silly as
eight or nine or ten year olds
left to themselves

Scratching and digging at dry dirt
with sticks outside a small house
while somebody’s mother
fixes lunch.

God damned unnoticed
children all hearing clearly
the curse of the passersby.

DON’T RELAX
© Don Brennan

don’t relax and let your
sadness die, curl up
in your heart like
something familiar

a Pakistani child
too exhausted from
loss of blood
to ever smile again

an Afgani family
blown apart by drone

remote trigger
brain splattered remains

too exhausted by death
to run for cover

Iraqi civilians
shot down every day
for being
Iraqi civilians

don’t relax
don’t let your sadness
die

to putrefy inside
the heart that is
your mind.

THE SECOND COMING by W.B. YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

POEMS FOR THE NEW PREZ

2008-12-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

AS WE CONTINUE

we who work
lifetime after lifetime

who learn poverty
learn daily struggle
generation after
generation

we who love ourselves
and our descendants
as our ancestors loved us

slaving in rich men’s
fields, taking their beatings
our beatings

taking their exile
our exile

we who work to survive
will be ready

when our children are
again allowed to play

to return home

for we continue to refuse
to be exiled
lifetime after lifetime
from the Earth.

-DON BRENNAN

MINING THE WRECKAGE 092608

Each day we search the rubble, picking away at
dusty bricks, broken boards, our work gloves
long since shredded, our hands too calloused now
for shallow bleeding.

We are the world’s working classes mining what
hope we are able to find among the wreckage
delivered daily in explosions from heavy guns
mounted by maniacs on top of armored trucks.

Each day we throw aside the broken and useless
bits that have been ripped from our lives, and
from the pieces left intact we put together what
will work for the future, for a future when the
fools’ empires have finally collapsed.

© Don Brennan

Deetje on Prop 8

2008-11-29T06:38:00.000-08:00

Response to my comments on Prop 8 by Deetje:

“Right on! In fact, though, it is the Declaration of Independence, not the US Constitution, that refers to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. However, the California State Constitution (which, after all, is the pertinent document in this case) does assert the right to pursuit of happiness and reads as follows "[Article 1, Section 1]: All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy. [New section adopted November 5, 1974]"

Another inaccurate report: The great Greek physician, Hippocrates, is rumored to have said, in a footnote to his famous oath:

“Sexual activity among consenting adults does no harm. Bigotry, on the other hand, injures us all.” – Don.

Prop 8

2008-11-28T10:56:00.000-08:00

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light…” Dylan Thomas

RAGE, RAGE AGAINST PROPHATE
Don Brennan

84 % of regular churchgoers in California voted yes on Proposition 8 on Nov. 4, 2008, to disallow marriage among gay, lesbian and transgender couples. (SF Chronicle, “Why Prop. 8 confounded pre-eleection pollsters” by Mark DiCamillo, Nov. 10.)

Organized Christianity has an embarrassing history of bigotry. Christian congregations have consistently discriminated against one another since the Jamestown incursion of 1607.

When European seekers of religious freedom colonized North America, they withdrew into sectarian strongholds (Puritans to New England, Catholics to Baltimore, etc.). When the worshipers eventually spread throughout the West, they brought their meanness and xenophobia with them. Besides oppressing and excluding one another, they have for generations fought to exclude people of non-European ancestry as well as Jews, women, and homosexuals, from the right to be “real” Americans.

Conservative at its core, in a culture where that high sounding term has become a euphemism for exclusion, Christianity has shown contempt rather than reverence for constitutional protections of liberty, and typically defines justice in terms of retribution rather than fairness. Sadly, Christian history has shown little regard for the love of humanity. Churches are self-seeking rather than caring, judgmental rather than compassionate, and preach hate in the name of their own “Prince of Peace”.

From the beginning, European-American Christians have chosen to interpret the Industrial Revolution as some sort of divine proof of white supremacy, and proceeded to patch together a pseudo-spirituality with variations on the inane concept of Manifest Destiny.

Cultural integrity in the European colonies died in the womb, as it were, and its stillborn corpse was then embalmed with the most toxic ingredients, viz. slavery and genocide. The corpse has long since turned to dust, but its grotesque skeleton - our lynching, ghettoizing, housing project and reservation building culture, continues its death dance inside the American religious establishment.

Indeed, organized religion in the USA perennially reveals itself as soulless, often hateful and, at times, as thousands of Mathew Shepherds have learned, murderous. So it is not surprising that the trampling of human rights by electoral mandate continues to haunt and disrupt the lives of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender couples from coast to coast.

Just as ethnic minorities struggle every day against white supremacy for jobs, housing and education, as do women against male supremacy, so gays must fight their own unending battles against denial of full citizenship. Homophobic persecution is morally wrong, flies in the face of the Constitution’s protections of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So the struggle must go on, and it will.

Like slavery and the male ownership of women, sexuality-based assaults on human rights must become just shameful relics of the past. Let us hope as well that Christian bigotry joins them there.

WISDOM OF THE EAST

2008-05-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

WISDOM OF THE EAST can be heard on TheSlamIdolPodcast, May 19, 2008. http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSlamIdolPodcast.

A love story composed under the influences of Lord Byron and Siddhartha Gautama:

WISDOM OF THE EAST by Don Brennan

In college one learns that nothing is all there is
and all there is is nothing at all.

On the way to class there appeared a vision of Maya
upon the shoulders of a Hindu god, she leaning back against
an outside wall, bare legs gripping the sides of his chest,
lips in the shape of a kiss, taunting a crowd with a look
that I clearly mistook for spiritual bliss, thus nearly losing
myself in sexual fantasy on the way to Asian phiolosophy.

Barely retrieved from the brink of lust by an
invisible cloud of academic dust sprinkled from
the mustached lips of a professor so old that one
might expect to find traces of mold clinging to
the tips of the hairs in his ears, I was lectured on
Svetaketu with a smile soft enough to wake me up,
to catch me looking about the room for transcendental
visions in the glinting shadows of his eyeglasses and
pretentious tweed.

He read a translation from Sanskrit, the Chandogya
Upanishad, sixth Prapathaka, twelfth Khanda,
the story of a wise man and his son and a tiny seed
divided by a thumbnail until no longer visible,
“That is the Self,” the wise one said, “and thou, my
son, art that.”

Just then my vision entered the room, having descended
from divine shoulders, and found a seat in the lecture hall
with covered legs, looking amused among a group of
girls arranged in an adolescent huddle, about to release a
great tide of embarassed laughter upon the world, not
unlike Moses, it seemed to me, about to drown
Pharaoh’s army.

When she happened to notice me staring, I said aloud.
“There you are!” The professor considered my comment
relevant and said, “Exactly!”

Thou, Svetaketu art that, awash in the sweet fruit slime
of Nyagrodha bearing seeds infinitesimal in English,
massive enough in Sanskrit to be sorted out in the sixth
Prapathaka, allowing the son of a holy man to sort a single
seed from its protective bed of pulp and to take it, not
unlike a flea between thunbnails, and to break it down
to a disappearing scale much closer to infinity according
to the wishes of Aruni the mystic father who asked,
“What do you see?”
“I don’t see anything, Dad.”
“There you are!”

The moldy professor of soft smiles and tweed
dismissed us at last, and there followed a moment
by the outside wall (Hindu god was otherwise
occupied) when I suggested, since we didn’t know
from Nyagrodha, that just the two of us go
to Safeway and get a kiwi, so we did, and we
looked into the kiwi seeds awash in delerious
juices, broken as fleas upon thumbnails to
find ourselves.

Licking our fingers we found nothing, so
we looked into one another, licking
each other’s fingers and found passion, the
tastes of tongues and bodily fluids. No longer
thinking of Sanskrit nor the professor’s lessons,
I managed one day in the tangles of her hair,
the soft breath of her skin, in the innocence
of her eyes to lose myself completely, and she
in her wisdom whispered, “There you are!”

NEW POEMS

2008-04-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

Hi, this about kola nuts is a responsive piece composed after finishing Chris Abani's novel, GRACELAND:

KOLA
by Don Brennan, brennan.don@gmail.com

I need something to be magic, something
from the ground grown up from ashes and roots
bringing to my nostrils the deep soil, deep and
tingling as lust, desiring to reach into the future.

I need something that needs me
to be magic, grown up with roots out of
ashes to ashes, roots out of living to dying by
talisman, an ancestor from Heaven’s
ground, an animal’s innocence gone wild.

An old woman to toss some kola nuts
on the dirt floor of her hut, to pick the one out
spinning at my foot, to read those lines
I’ve read about in books, I need
my sacred book to speak.

I need magic verse, something written
by fingers dipping into my own blood, my
mother’s birthing blood, written and tucked
into a deerskin pouch, written
in the deer’s own blood.

When the kola nut finally does answer,
I need to close my book, close my eyes
and pass this moment bowing low,
first one ear to the ground, then the other.

Next poem because we're killing all the wild salmon

TERRIBLE ABUNDANCES
by Don Brennan, brennan.don@gmail.com

A terrible abundance of fish
we cannot tolerate,
nor rainforest canopy.

You say the earth is your mama,
and you won’t pimp her out?

That’s ok, just leave her to me,
and all the unwanted children,
just leave them to me.

The purpose of surplus is to
stimulate marketing.

The scarcer the diamond, the higher
the price; the same is true of salmon.

Vegetative overgrowth
is invasive, sterilizing
the post-modern garden.

Redwoods? You want to live in a tree,
go ahead, but you’ll have to
buy it from me.
Trees are tall weeds, and the only
money to be made from weeds
is in their extermination.

Euros, Dollars, Yen, Yuan, Rubles,
we roll about in these, twist,
dance on our backs, flea-ridden,
tongues hanging.

Of what purpose are a million geese
cruising above clouds, honking
mystically?

Meat on your table and fluffy
down in your luxury comforter,
these are true goose destiny.

And you know we’re green!
The ice age comes, you’re going
to love that comforter.

God? A profiteer just like me; delights
in an extravagant surplus of people,
and a growth economy.

A trivia question for you: At what precise point in time did the U.S. Government squeeze off its kill-shot into the heart of our democracy? I don't know. Never been any good at trivia:

LOOTING, SHOOTING by Don Brennan, brennan.don@gmail.com

Maybe there is a woman, child or man somewhere has taken a stab in the heart and walked away but I don’t know such a one and don’t believe the story.

Maybe stab in the heart is just a metaphor, an analogy to get our attention, emphasize a poetic point on an issue of personal pain, of loss or gain, love gone sour as old milk left some hours in the sun.

That can happen to love, turn it to hate or maybe even a stab in the heart, sour and old, dead before it’s grown cold enough to break out in longed-for joyous laughter.

So maybe there is such a one walked away pierced like that through the chest dead center, taking the pain like a bullet in the brain unknown to me in the annals of history.

Would you care to meet the walking dead one standing face up, eyes staring into you instead of into the dirt at your feet, bulleted or stabbed with all love gone but life still hanging on?

Not something to wish for in moments of sanity as infrequent as may be when one is alone thinking of democracy and a dead constitution brain shot, heart stabbed. One of those analogous things, a simile committed during a metaphorical spree of Earth-looting.

Please watch and listen to me on TV, Friday, April 25, 2008, Comcast Channel 76 on a new show called "Citizen Poets Bulletin" produced by J. Evert Winburn, aka James.

NEW BOOK

2008-02-11T16:11:00.000-08:00

New Chapbook, URGENT CARE, going to the printer this week will be available for sale ($5) in March wherever you find me: Just about every Wednesday night at Sacred Grounds (Cole and Hayes), first Mondays at Gallery Cafe (Mason and Washington ), second Mondays at It's A Grind (Polk and Washington), third Thursdays at Bibliohead Bookstore (Gough and Hayes), and every Tuesday afternoon, 3:30 - 5:30 at Hospitality House Community Arts Center, 146 Leavenworth at Turk. Or email, >brennan.don@gmail.com<, or call (415) 350-1554 to help recover my printing costs. Thanks.
Cover photo to the left is of my wife, Aura.

Two poems:

US AND THEM

Who and why are they,
needing more and more
behind our backs?
We who have so little
know they need
nothing more.

Who and what are they,
other than their own
thirst? As though we
weren’t thirsty too.

The one’s who drink so
deeply from violent
dreams swim
downstream to salt water
cursing the sea.

Why are they and we
in this matter of fortune
so estranged? Needing
one another
behind the backs
of one another.

Who and why are they
so driven to conquest?

We have lost them
and they, us.

LOVE AND THE OLD MOON

This feels like love
sinking , vertigo falling
an osprey diving
disappearing
below the horizon.

The horizon disappears, a
beautiful last goodbye
leaving us behind.

An old moon rising
leaves us waning.

This reminds me of Aquinas
looking for first causes
attempting to fill the void
with a single deity falling
absurdly into existence
like sun fall.

A sundown saint
falling out of place
out of time’s moondown
darkness.

The earth in the way of light
leaves us alone with stars
you and I
feeling like storm
clouds in the way of
all light.

You and I lost
for an interval between
the undiscovered
and nothing.

But never precisely lost
because everywhere is an abyss
an interval of distinction between
one thing and another thing.

Love’s location, everywhere.

Leavenworth Writers Group

2008-01-30T09:54:00.000-08:00

THE TRIO

Painting by Charles Curtis Blackwell, and front cover art for the winter edition of TRACKS #3, an anthology of the Leavenworth Street Writers Group.

Email me, >brennan.don@gmail.com<, about purchasing a copy of the anthology for $5. Here is a sample of what you will find there:

DUMB-LIPPED PETRIFIED MOMENTARY SETBACK BREAKS ITS SILENCE
by Marsha Campbell

Our homage goes out to you next time the fire our sun
drills holes in our pupils thus obliterating the need to see
whilst our ears pick up the least pin-prick or tinsel dance
upon the drumbeat of our hearts a drama so self-filling that we know now now our need to write to flex that head muscle.

Forget what animal I am blinking and hah-ing like the desert corpses of defeated mice covered in sand. Tonight won’t be just any night, Bringer of songs, Harbinger of Peace – my fear goes out to thee. I cannot speak but I can lie wasting away too many bodies’ unprecedented musical incidentals shiny white spirits punctuated by obstreperous mobs, nor will I seek out scintillating territorial surprises.

Reading you is taking messages and losing them, taking and losing, taking and losing…How could you not answer my intermittent cries for help but intermittently, like, they say, two ships that pass in the night?

My ship has sails that are made of silk. Without the edge of the world to slip off what direction do we flow in?

Oh, happy industry, my fellow man, this writing be! How jittery this exercise inside of me! You laid the law down with a wooden pen that was your gift to me, Amen.

by o.d.ludyeh
metamorphosis

a caterpillar catapults form a leaf on the moon
to a meteor in a mist,
there to weave its astral womb
a butterfly flits fleetly along the orbit of mars,
its swarthy wings swashed with a nebular catarrh

high in a bastard tree atop a steep lunar dune
a spark in an egg inscribes its shell with the runes
an eagle sears circles about peaks rougely charred,
its pennae pasted with the sediment of stars

from a grub of blue flame
from an ovum of white fire
spawned in the heavens
into flight burst two desires
sovereigns of space,
crowns jewelled with suns,
they flap silent thunder wings
to the clap of the big-bang drum

ON TRUE LOVE
by David DiGangi

What do I know of love?
I’m humbled by the question

I can tell you what I’m drawn to – I can speak of that which keeps me coming back

Is love like a basket that holds our treasures

Or is love like a tapestry
or a Buddhist mandala forever growing
for ever changing

I have no answer

I only know what I love.

The word love pops up over and over

Love as sensation
Love as a mammalian instinct
Love as a flesh desire

I’m sure I loved Willie Mays
on a Saturday afternoon

I know I loved Nat King Cole all through the night

I love Van Gogh for what he painted

John Denver makes me cry singing of love for Colorado

Grandmother on Life by George Wynn

My grandmother Bronislawa
Remembers playing in the park
In Cracow with her children
It is a very white night
She is in the graveyard
Of dreams eying every
Green leaf dying to twist each
Leaf into a Star of David
Inscribe her hands with
Something of the Hebrew
Alphabet into a prayer for the dead
Her impressionistic artist's mind rolls
Out the colors yellow, purple and red
Which do not fit on the canvas
Of her very black soul
Within where everything
Has already been said

SCRAPS by Ringo

Named for the bribing by store-owners of foot-patrolmen to curb shoplifing, the Tenderloin will always be remembered for its economically oppressed, cops on the take, trash in the strteets, dealers and pimps on the corners. The bright lights of the burlesque, like electric gumdrops, are the only eye-candy in this barren neighborhood.

AMERICAN PRISM
by Ray Valdez

I arrive in America,
I see myself in a mirror,
but not as I appear …
Rather, as I really am.
The nakedness!
The lion mane of long hair!
There, in my mirror image:
the natural rhythms of life.
But I’m imprisoned in
armor …
reflecting armor
imprisimed in refractions
of American Indian Time.

1967 REVISITED
by Charles Curtis Blackwell

Nostalgic yet real enough to be touched with eyes closed

Right on!

I tells you that’s soul, I mean it’s got enough soul to shout
AH-MEN!
Man, what chew say!
I ain’t seen nothing like it before;
Soul bellowing, blazin’, I mean set the stage on fire.
blazin’ brother, smoke and fire!

That’s right, see, see, cause you know, day say where
there’s smoke there’s fire

But see her drippin’ sweat, I mean she was soakin’ wet;
Shit man,
just like pussy, in the middle of the mood, Baby!

Shit! Tell her to cry for me, where’s she at?

I don’t know ‘bout dat, all
I know is she touched my
soul too.

New Genesis
by Dominique Leslie

God creates, Moving across the face of the water of nothingness;
Holy winds,
Holy Spirit,
Breath of life,
Creates life.
Nature creates,
Holy Spirit moves across the face of the Water;
Wind across the waters,
Creates ripples.
Moving out in concentric circles;
The Grand Spiral.
The dancer creates,
Holy Spirit moves across the face ofthe Water;
Dervish in devotion,
Spirals in, spirals out.
Breath of life moves them,
As they create a prayer/dance.
The artist creates,
Holy gusts, geists, whirlwinds move across the face of the Water;
From the depths swirling emotions,
Holy Spirits, Holy winds,
Breathe life into each work of art.
The Spirit moves across the face of the Water,
Creates this poem.

MEDITATION
by Janie Dickens

Have you ever sat
Or envisioned yourself
On a mountain top
Without someone breathing
In your ear or casting a shadow
Forever more over your
Soul, your being?

Wow, the sunlight is great
But the celestial power
Is better.

The god spirit, the
Metaphysical delight
Of all of
Nature’s creatures.

Keep on looking for the
Light

NIGHT LIGHT by JJ Rush

To diminish you is
To diminish me
Yet without your love
I couldn’t be.
This has nothing to do
With what you do
The whole eye shuts
And the world is new.

SISTERS by Patricia Anne Walker

We live, love and run from each other
Effervescence of perfume
Three cheers for sisters to sing
For the church, Ali and The Sun King
Down Larkin Avenue
Here comes the Sun King
For families, naturally, and apart and gray
Desert sands singing for the last soul
Lost as sisters on the way home

EBONY LOVE
by J.B. Saunders

Sweet mounds of ebony flesh,
Gyrating thighs,
Pleasing to the eyes,
Ooo girl, you’re something else
Movement as fluid ass,
Easy woman … a bird gliding …
Through the skies
Pleasing to the – do it girl
Gently entwined
Umm … you are mine.
Our bodies, our minds, together
Let us not part – never
Here my head rests
Betwixt two succulent breasts
Trapped between gyrating thighs
Pleasing to the eyes
Captivated! Never leave me …

WHAT WORDS ARE
by Carlos Ramirez

Words tumble, descend and lie
like insects pressed against supine books

Connected to one another like washed
garments hung along the world’s outdoor
clothes lines

Nuances emerge from their beholders’ breaths
like spit and stars shooting arcs across
the winds

What aren’t they, aren’t they …?

Water borne coins at the marketplace of
everyday’s dance of survival.

tg by Don Brennan

in these gratitude days we steep and grow
strong as herbal tea just off the tree
boiled creamed sugared
waiting to be tasted, cooling in a moment
that rises to a tired man’s lips

the life we sip scalds the tip of the tongue
singing to our rested bones that
joy is the burden we have sought since
the ancestors lay themselves across death’s
barricade and brought us here

and here we are, nowhere else, hearing the horns
the strings the bugaloo drums as we swallow
our brew more sacred now than we have ever
known her to be in her delerium, calling us to the
weighted down table

sauces dripping, stuffings stuffed, children on the
gallop into a living space where voices cram our
ears with uninvented poetry, shouting out love’s
unthinking nonsense in the only rhyme a heart
knows how to feel without bleeding

in these gratitude moments when rage is teased
into subsiding, when fear submits to hoarse laughter
and paws the air like a puppy begging for more, the
world’s current evils cower briefly in faithless
corners, leave us in peace.

BIRTHDAY BOYS

2008-01-27T11:58:00.001-08:00

JAN. 27, 2008, THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF RAPHAEL (LEFT) AND OSCAR, APPEARING HERE IN AN EARLIER PHOTO (WITH THEIR MOTHER, ETHEL) WHEN THE BOYS WERE STILL LITTLE KIDS.

A new poem dedicated to the twins and all the rest of "us":

US AND THEM
by Don Brennan

Who and why are they, needing more and more
behind our backs?
We who have so little know they need
nothing more.

Who and what are they, other than their own
thirst? As though we
weren’t thirsty too.

The one’s who drink so deeply from violent
dreams swim downstream to salt water
cursing the sea.

Why are they and we in this matter of fortune
so distant? Needing one another behind the backs
of one another.

Who and why are they so driven to
conquest? We have lost them
and they, us.

New Poems, My Take, Thank You Canada

2008-01-22T11:33:00.000-08:00

The following poem is to appear in the April 2008 issue of Poetry Explosion Newsletter. Thank you, PEN!

THAT WORLD YOU
LEFT BEHIND
by don brennan

When you went
the door clicked lightly

as though disappearance
forever requires
no fanfare

just the click of a dry tongue

slipping into shoes
late at night

a cool depression
in an empty bed

a house full of us
snoring, careening

towards our
new day, our sad
awakening

A new SF journal, THE POET'S GALLERY QUARTERLY, has accepted the following for the Spring 2008 issue. Thank you Ana Elsner and Richard Hackett, editors.

WHO WE ARE?
by don brennan

circles, galaxies, storm drain spirals
circles with destinations

logical tautologies, mental loops demanding
that we repeat the truth

teach us by repetition: the fire dance may
consume us but not destroy us, destroy us
but not consume us,

teach us the meaning that
belongs to mortality,
that is mortality

the galaxies we have come from spiral
back into their source, the soul a black hole
sucking life out of death
and spitting it back
to be evaporated in the
water cycle, the fertility cycle

the storm drain essential to
tempestuous existence, our ignorance
essential to birth and death,

the repetitive truth, babies stacking blocks
and knocking them down,
creation repeating for every generation

we have spiraled out of the earth, who has
spiraled from all the suns, and they are hers,
she is their storm drain

for a moment, a moment which is only
an eternal repetition,
we are allowed to witness history,
a spiral, a tautology,
a dialectic contradicted
by itself each time one of us
is born into the center
of the galactic storm,needing
a peaceful moment
to observe who we are as the
winds and rains gather,
spiral out of fire

we could use a moment
without injustice, cruelty,
war

or is that who we are?

MY TAKE on where we are going as a nation, JAN. 22, 2008, Don Brennan:

I'm reading END OF AMERICA (Naomi Wolf) now, and have just finished SHOCK DOCTRINE (Naomi Klien), and I think intelligent historians like the "Naomis" are reluctant to make predictions for good reasons. Marx set a disastrous precedent for predictors. Contemporary historians tend to avoid both apocalyptic and Utopian projections.

That being said, I figure that the US empire is nearing the end of its glory days ("gory days?"), and will probably be replaced on the imperial stage by Russia and China. These two bloated and corrupt super-powers will keep wars against the poor underway no doubt. Or maybe not. They are after all, socialist in principle, but power and greed can obliterate principle. Look at the USA now, today. Pathetic. Millions of our citizens trying to make it on the streets and in prison. The military harvesting recruits from the poor, the uneducated; economic policy driven by corporate lobbyists keeping the youth of the nation poor and uneducated. JFK, a few months before he was shot, said in a speech to the Organization of (Latin) American States that there is no freedom without freedom from poverty. Yet poverty around the world is created by the rich, for profit. Wars are waged by billionaires against working people everywhere, for profit.
Child labor is slavery. Using weapons of mass destruction against civilians is murder. The USA claims to be a free-market democracy, but it is not. Like Russia and China, this nation has become an oligarchy. The essence of oligarchy is class war, which has been known to degenerate into civil war.

I have been wary of what Naomi Wolf describes as impending US Fascism for a long time, and always have my passport valid and within reach. Keep in mind that under our highly touted constitutional government we supported a vicious system of slavery and Jim Crow through many generations, so the US power structure has had plenty of experience at denying rights and freedom. The newest assaults on domestic rights, from Lyndon Johnson through GW Bush are really not new.

Our system of checks and balances has been gasping for air since it's earliest days, born as something of a "blue baby" during Thomas Jefferson's orchestrated wars against the indigenous people of the continent. Jefferson called the theft of Indian land "The Empire For Liberty." What he managed to do in the late eighteenth century was fatten the US treasury by selling stolen property to real estate speculators. Just like our current incursions into Arab and Persian lands, the Indian wars were fought for profit, and quite successfully.

But the socialists have always been with us, struggling and fighting back. They seem to be making headway in Latin America under the leadership of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, not to mention the historical inspiration of Cuba. If Latin American socialism succeeds, US capitalism could be brought to its knees in the West while Russians and Asians eagerly pick its bones clean in the East.

On my gloomy days, I tend to suspect that time is running out for American middle class freedom. As our streets and highways become more chaotic, more violent, "the people" will cry out for iron fisted leaders and jack-booted cops, and the corporations will be more than happy to oblige. Also, I grew up under the nuclear cloud, and can't avoid the notion that greed and fanaticism could combine in a variety of scenarios to unleash global holocaust. But, like the socialists, our pacifists and non-violent activists such as Martin Luther King have also always been with us, struggling and organizing. It is they who inspire my optimism. These are the true citizens of the Earth who, in the words of Jesse Jackson, keep hope alive.

Finally, here is some tangible hope:

THANK YOU CANADA!

SF CHRONICLE, SAT. JAN 19, 2008, pg. A3:

Canada singles out U.S. for risk of torture

Toronto – A training manual for Canadian diplomats lists the United States as a country where prisoners risk torture and abuse, citing interrogation techniques such as stripping prisoners, blind folding and sleep deprivation.

The Foreign Affairs Department document, released Friday, singled out The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay. It also names Israel, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria as places where inmates could face torture.

The listing drew a sharp response from the United States. “We find it offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China,” said U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins.

Martin Luther King

2008-01-18T08:15:00.001-08:00

In the 1950's, a young preacher/activist of Montgomery, Alabama, USA, gave the nation the gift of his wisdom. He explained very clearly to all who would listen that the time for violence around the world had passed, and the time for universal justice had arrived. Many listened and have not forgotten, and many more refused to listen, condemned and ignored the man, jailed and abused him, and finally shot him down. But he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace at a time, before it was despoiled by its presentation to Henry Kissinger, when that prize still had meaning. King was not only a spokesperson for racial equality in a society that viciously demeans millions of its own citizens for the "crime" of skin tone, but the man was clearly a prophet for our time, for today, for the twenty-first century. His words, excerpted below, were spoken in 1957. The consequences of violence and the refusal of corporate government to commit to global justice, threaten a suicidal apocalypse for humanity. I suggest that if our families and children are to have a future, we need to revitalize the teaching of Doctor King, and to work hard to carry his thoughts into action.

--Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one's whole being into the being of another.

--Martin Luther King, Jr., Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence and the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.
John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And he goes on toward the end to say, "Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution.

--Martin Luther King, Jr., Justice Without Violence- 3 April 1957

Now the question that we face this evening is this: In the light of the fact that the oppressed people of the world are rising up against that oppression; in the light of the fact that the American Negro is rising up against his oppression, the question is this: How will the struggle for justice be waged? And I think that is one of the most important questions confronting our generation. As we move to make justice a reality on the international scale, as we move to make justice a reality in this nation, how will the struggle be waged? It seems to me that there are two possible answers to this question. One is to use the all too prevalent method of physical violence. And it is true that man throughout history has sought to achieve justice through violence. And we all know the danger of this method. It seems to create many more social problems than it solves. And it seems to me that in the struggle for justice that this method is ultimately futile. If the Negro succumbs to the temptation of using violence in his struggle for justice, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate life of bitterness, and his chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. And there is still a voice crying into the vista of time saying to every potential Peter, “Put up your sword.” And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations and communities that failed to follow this command.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, M.L.K!

BUDDHASERMON

2007-10-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

BUDDHASERMON

so light
nearly adrift in air
so solid
a sheer granite cliff
lost in fog at her feet
maybe his feet

human, that was certain
gender less so
Chinese in name
same as the skating
champion from L.A.

Kwan and then “zeon bosatsu”
kwanzeonbosatsu
some kind of prayer
a name becomes a chant
lord have mercy someone whispered, a sutra

Buddha sermon
kwanzeonbosatsu
healing all suffering
in the mist at her feet

lost in fog too deep
at her feet
our wounds too deep
for explanation

kwanzeonbosatsu

Natalie's Elephant

2007-10-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

Our niece, Natalie, traveling
and studying in India
met this elephant, Gerard.

She'll be home in winter and
Gerard will miss her then, as we
do now.

Our daughter, Sigrid,
is an LA based playwright, who pens apocalyptic, funny, brutal-bizarre world stories. In her work, the fantastical mashes with the personal and historical (hysterical?). Pop culture copulates with myth, poetic language is vernacular, images are stark grandeur, and what will make you laugh will make you cry. Ms. Gilmer creates melodrama in warfare, family farce outta the Ku Klux Klan, global politics as high school cheerleading. She insists, as well, upon crafting situational comedy in the context of slavery.

Sigrid (BA in Theatre from Cal State LA, and a MFA from Cal Arts) is currently obsessed with 19th Century America (cowboys/Indians, abolitionists, minstrelsy). 1980’s action flicks, whiteness, the mind and it’s limitations, and Sci-Fi novels also have a grip on her imagination. Last spring Sigrid went to Colorado for a writer's workshop and returned to LA with this poem:

White Out
(Boulder, 2007.)

I itch when I sleep
Scratch off conspicuousness
Humble and over friendly at lunch.
I hate myself in the night and my skin tingles.
I itch.
Yes, us people have a chip on our shoulder.
it’s a token or I am one.
A cheery smile walks me to the table, everything is golden. The stucco walls, the hot hot hot ass sun, the giggle of the fountain, water shooting to the hot hot hot ass sun. It’s all so perfect. I don’t fit.
Smug belonging, disguised as a welcome takes my order.
(Arugula with goat cheese and strawberries, pinto gringo. I mean grigio)
I notice that complete unawareness makes their teeth shiny and sharp.
What’s the point, I wonder?
Itchy.
Can’t sleep.
The open door brings in hot air and the anticipation of thunder.
I want to tear off my skin.
Cuz it’s so nice here.
Great restaurants, shops, mountains.
I begin at my thighs, rake up, down up down. Fastfastfastfastfastfastfast.
Ghosts of 60’s Woolworth’s counters popping through my skin
Burn Sting Sweat
Itching to Fear
All of a sudden violent everywhere.
Hard white ice slams on to the roof, drop kicks the air temperature,
Cool violent inhale exhale, the possibility of sleep at my shoulders
Outside catching the solidity of really dumb-ass emotions, my hands up to the sky, hard hard white projectiles falling through my fingers like nothing.

S. Gilmer

Unable to resist responding to a poem with another poem, Don Brennan offers the following:

Hi, To comment on poetry as fine as this should NEVER be attempted in prose. All literary critics, and especially poetry critics, are careerist assholes, really, it's a scientifically proven fact older than scientific method itself, everybody knows that except poetry critics. love.

commentary on white out poem:

black woman in a white town
Colorado town where the snow can blow in the wind
can't see shit
white out

except the white shit
can always see that black girl
conspicuous
what's that on you?
skin?
what's that on your skin?
you?

no wonder you itch up in here where it's
Colorado
no wonder you scratchin' in the night

ms. conspicuous humble and over friendly
black woman at lunch itchin'
like you allergic to tokens or somethin'
'scuse me droppin' my g's
comes of reading too much Langston Hughes I do suppose.

what's the point
cheery smile
walk this young chip on her shoulder token lady
to a table

pinto gringo I don't mean grigio
what makes your teeth so shiny and sharp?
perfect unawareness, that's what
arugula this and no I will not call you
a bitch mother fucker you want that
watch a queen latifa movie

you think I want to tear off my
skin or something
look like you
all hot hot hot ass perfect
cuz it's so nice here
restaurants, shops, mountains and shit?

excuse me again while I take the air
hard white ice slamming my roof while i
take to my bed
and scratch my black off
scratch my fear off beginning at my
thighs burning raking stinging sweating

'till I be white enough
bleed enough
cool violent inhale exhale
smug belonging
smug belonging
welcome welcome I'll be you're
my name is
hard hard white projectile

excuse me while I tear off my skin
be nothing like you cuz
it's so nice here.

don brennan

Happy Birthday John Coltrane

2007-09-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Poem by Justin Desmangles

John Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967)

He looks past and sees the future,
the great arc of being, a panorama of sound.

He closes fingers over wounds,
traces the scar beneath the Atlantic.

He brings changes, changing
hate to love. Suffering into wisdom

Caresses cares to be.

He cries the joy of exalted fire breathing,
burns time into eternity.

He steps, far moving beyond moving.
Dances a silent music, pulsing. Moves again.

Access to the axis. Circles circles center sound.
Eccentric beam, no barrier.

Some sun to come, this son who came.

John Coltrane!

Papa Was A Rolling Beatle

2007-09-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

Papa Was A Rolling Beatle by Don Brennan
(Inspired by Stephen Kopel)

let us wrap these things
in secrets long held
under water

thought they'd drown by now
but look, they surface

bob about for a time, jetsam
it would seem, or is that flotsam
afloat, resurrecting...

TED! resurrec-TED!
NOT

“TING!”

we are now free to move about the country

allow us to introduce our selves
mickjohnkeithringo
the snow white dwarves
dancing around THE TEMPTATIONS

all we are s-a-a-a-y-ing
is give hallie burton a chance
to recycle some horrors
of america’s past

so pleased to gift wrap,
don’t you see?
take, eat, think of me

we offer this heart, body
and a bloody fookin’ melody

oh, sorry, we're not Muslim,
are we? some are? well, how about
three-fifths of a muslimperson
coo-ull-e-nuff for a free country?

all we are s-a-a-a-y-ing
is we can get by
with a little help
from ruling class friends

greed is all we need
greed is all we need
get back, Loretta
YEAH YEAH YEAH

don’t you know
MY NAME?
YOURNAME?
OURNAME?

so let us soak this further
in secrets long held nay-kid
or is that nekkid?
hooded
under wraps
under taps
DRIPS…DROPS…DRIP BY
DROP that camcorder fool!

until the boys sing

three-fifths of three hundred forty or fifty
thousand some odd nekkid muslim folks
dead under a hooded sky

a few still singing to a half-dozen
good old Carolina-California boys and a coupl’a gals
‘cuz them’s muslims you know an’ it really piss’em off

camouflaged a’ course, the white boys
snickerin’
snorting’

remember the good old
days, DUBYA? Snikerin’ and
Snortin’? yeah yeah yeah

until the boys sing
USA GITMO ABU GRAIB
to the tune of
AL QUAIDA BY THE BAY
“in ainglush godammit
‘til they get it right”

until then
let there never again
be no Martin Luther King nor British Invasion nor San Francisco Rennaisance nor –TED nor -TING!

we shall now be free to move
about the country

but we shall not be moved
by no TEMPTATIONS
off the res-erection

allow me to introduce
myself

BAGHDAD

bombed like totally, dude
like DUDE!!
shock and fucking awesome

we didn't even know LIKE
you know? her name!!!
so we're like

"bomb the mother fucker!!”
like yesterday
today
and tomorrow too

yeah-yeah-yeah
woo-woo

allow us please to introduce ourselves

georgewbush floating across the floor in the
all we need is loving arms of dick chaney
to the tune of, “His kid is gay you know what they say…”

yeah yeah yeah woo woo.

For Sigrid, our lovely, talented daughter

2007-08-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Amusing The Beasts
by Don Brennan

Ideas
powerful as
great sea beasts
stirring in her mind

She walks the quiet beach
barefoot as a woman at rest
dreadlocks wrapped in the wind
eyes on the horizon
taking a break from downtown
in rolled up baggy jeans
thumbs hooked sideways
in her pockets

Taking a breather from work
left a little early
lied a little to the boss
needing to get to the beach
needing a breath of the ocean

A group of gray whales at rest
just outside the surf
spouting now and again
suspending their tonnage in the currents
murmuring to their children
singing songs on the way to
Baja

A notion stirred some current in her heart
as though someone else had been
moving inside her all day
drifting inside her
leaving her unmoored

The cold sea kisses her feet
soaks her to her knees
makes her trousers cling

She thinks just then
she hears a whale sing

Just the setting sun perhaps
wringing colors out of clouds
or the wind
whispering through her hair

But she thought
she heard them singing

Her own self laughing perhaps
soaking wet from dancing
spalashing like a fool
in love with someone new

Someone she had never known
or had probably forgot
like an old school jacket in a vacant lot

Some new notion of herself
giggling in the surf
amusing the beasts at sea
dancing to their tunes
getting foam all in her hair
almost forgetting she is freezing
almost forgetting to take her wet self
back to the train
before dark

Whales don’t rest long
in local waters

They begin moving south
towards a deep and fertile bay
where they like to love and play
when they are free.

In Memoriam

2007-08-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

Robert Bruce Gilmer 1969 - 1971

SINCE HE LAY HIMSELF DOWN
Don Brennan

We take all but a mile or so by train
walking six blocks to the station on
one of our hand-in-hand days.

Sun and clouds, a few sprinkly drops
talking about a shower coming on
wondering if the rain this spring
will ever quit, something to mumble about on a lazy Easter Sunday.

Underground, the train rolls to a
stop, nine cars to the airport, full
of travelers and luggage,
two seats together facing backwards.

Talk about last night, seventeen
for dinner, gumbo with crab, sweet
potato pie, laugh about sleeping in
‘til nearly noon, encouraged by
Lao Tzu: “…non-action is achieved.”

Get off with three or four others
at Colma, follow the crowd onto the
elevator, walk a mile to the cemetery,
buy a few flowers, carnations and a
spiky white thing.

Mausoleum open 8am to 6pm on
Sundays, enter the west door, walk
steadily among the dead, several
entombed on either side since the 1920’s.

Our toddler’s remains are on the east end,
in an open court, gone to ashes when he was two,
thirty six years ago, lay himself down in your arms
with leukemia when he was two.

For nearly twenty years you did not
visit his grave, simply could not go near
where he lay, but now it’s ok to drop by
several times a year, talk to him.

Tell him his sisters and brother are doing
alright, (of course he already knows that)
and thank him for all the help, that you don’t
know how we’d make it without him
looking out for us.

Often fail to mention that he has been in your
thoughts every day since before he was born,
since he lay himself down against your breast
and stopped living.

You don’t have to tell him
what he already knows.

ON THE EXPOITATION OF THE HUDDLED MASSES

2007-08-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

ON THE EXPLOITATION OF THE HUDDLED MASSES
by Don Brennan 8/1/07

it’s the anger
not the love
running us now

the love
not the anger
fueling our fury

orphaned lambs, we crowd against any
bloated belly to stay alive, ignore
the risks

suck the fat fingers that would
strangle us

watch for false
moves

a head fake, the
scrape of a blade on
stone pushes us to
the center

leaving sisters and brothers
behind on the fringes to
do the feeding
do the dying

good shepherds have brought us
here, good butchers engage in active
bidding

we are divine sacrifice, our
revelation, the babble
of the auctioneer.

SORROW, MAGIC, HUNTING AND GATHERING

2007-07-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

HUNT, GATHER
by Don Brennan.

as the ancestors gathered
nourishment from the Savannah
we embrace psychosis

this surrounding madness
arms outstretched
gather it

help one another pack it
back to the condo
wire it in, hard-drive it

God so loved the world
arms outstretched
against His tree

We so love the world
that confines, cages
imprisons Our children

butchers them
arms at odd angles
akimbo, bulleted

sainted ones continue
filling bassinets
see their little

faces in the strollers
rolling around the globe
protected by mothers
fathers

we can teach the babies
war, drunkenness
rape

our accumulated
psychoses
lie in wait

or we can hunt
and gather
ourselves

teach the babies
love.

SORROWS 7/15/07
by Don Brennan

sorrows rising on the horizon
a dawn of limited
visibility

don’t need it now, yet
up they come
cold, indifferent

prow of a mystery ship
churning the sea

trailing a wake away from
you and me

plowing the waters

all that power
in our direction

careless as a belligerent
innocent

if sorrow had eyes, they’d be
empty

but the course is set
no need to see

no need for us to
back away

running in sand
plowed up to
our feet

lay us out
crush us up the middle

what do sorrows weigh
but a ton a foot

a hundred ton
football field

high enough
to obliterate sky

furrowing our
chest

saw it coming
toss them aside

still able, ourselves
to rise.

MAGIC AND MIND
by Don Brennan (7/18/07)

reason, a sparrow
on a fly by

magic crawls away
in panic

a startled caterpillar
bird wing shadows

a hundred legs scrambling
no peace in Nature

a belly hungry for
caterpillar meat

looking to swoop
peck, taste

swallow the larva
disrupt metamorphosis

solve the mystery
the problem

burp, digest
the flesh

poop, then fly
away

try to catch
the butterfly

LANGSTON HUGHES

2007-07-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

SOME WHERE HE SAID, "Life ain't no crystal stair..."
and in THE PO' BOY BLUES, Hughes finished with,

"Weary, weary,

Weary early in de morn.

Weary, weary,

Early, early in de morn.

I's so weary

I wish I'd never been born"


BUT THEN THE MAN WROTE "LIFE IS FINE"
like this:

"So since I'm still here livin',

I guess I will live on.

I could've died for love--

But for livin' I was born"

FOR LANGSTON HUGHES, POET OF
RAGE AND HOPE:

HOPE SHOUTS
by Don Brennan

When we find it difficult
to move with the beat of the heart
because the heart is moving
to more frantic rhythms

We often curl around ourselves
yearn to return
to feel the mother’s belly
from inside, return

To the depths of the sea
to life before birth
to death before life

Believing hope is lost, we
cannot feel her calling us
as we run from societal madness

As we dream that violence
has found its
way inside our ribs

Discovered us sleeping
defenseless, as in a nursery

Has decided to feast on us,
chew the heart,
taste us with
drooling lips

We run into night
screaming
believing we are doomed

Not seeing that our
doom-dream is
hope shouting at us to
wake up, calling out
to us who have forgotten

Hope is the deity
of time, she has all
that we need.

Hughes, a literary genius, lived his life as a second class citizen in his home country. He advises us all with a few simple lines: WHEN DREAMS DIE
by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

DYING DREAMS
by Don Brennan

If your dreams should ever die
you may meet their ghosts
coming back to taunt you,
haunt your sleep, it's what
ghosts do.

They mean to shake you
awake from that fearful corner
of your brain, where crushed
dreams are forced into windowless
seclusion, to struggle like terminal
asthmatics for air, raging desperadoes
seeking light.

Hope summons the strength to
scream at you from that tortured
corner in the voices of a multitude
of lunatics chained to walls, refusing
to let you rest in the underground
of dead dreams.

No, you must rouse yourself and sing
with the power of Orpheus among the
phantoms; persuade the guardians of Hell
by your song, convince them by your love
to release the dead to your care.

To prevent hope's silencing, hope's
vanishing, you must guide the dead souls
back to life.

Oscar & Raphael

2007-07-15T00:54:00.001-07:00

POEM:

Say Hello
to my little friends...

Raphael
upside down on the left

and Oscar

twin grandsons

two more reasons to
reduce carbon emissions

create a sustainable
human environment
on Earth

eliminate poverty
and war

stop all the violence
right away

free global health care

free education

for everyone

share all the
wealth

right away

too late is too late

there's not much time

they're growing fast.

Don & Oona

2007-07-14T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hi, Introducing my granddaughter, Oona Grace Brennan. Poem for Oona:

GRACE
by Don Brennan

So much affection
ensnared me
a smile is all I needed
to see
a laugh was all she
needed from me
her comedy, my delight

Some luck, yes!
call it grace
something had fallen on me
a sea spray on a
hot day
caressing my face

By grace
beauty falls
softly as our need
drifting on us
down from
clean places
outside desire

The way rain and
snow touch the Earth’s
fragile face
when she is new

When she needs them to.
Grace speaks by singing
In a whispering
voice from inside

Enchantment moves
by rocking it
dancing close
rock it, Baby
hand at the middle
of your back

We, the earth, able to hear
to feel affection in the weather
rain drumming
sun steaming

Behind a beat dancing
singing to us

Able to feel
affection moving
in one another

By grace our universe
moves us
in our own dance

Our forever, ongoing
love song
so familiar

listen.

ROSES, IRIS, TULIPS

2007-07-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

Aura

POETRY WORKS
Chap book Sales and Exchange
Don Brennan

NEW POEM:

ROSES, IRIS, TULIPS(for my wife, Aura)
by Don Brennan

roses, iris, tulips speak purple

lower their voices
to a deep red whispering

a private conversation
in the damp grass

certain yellow flowers
known as weeds
begin a wind song

we are brought back
to lives of struggle, of

keeping on, of taking up
ourselves again
in wordless places

how shall we allow the wind
to sing our songs

to speak to one another
in displays of color

as though our thoughts
were petals

connected to roots by
green stems

how to release pollen and
leaves into the
musical air

that is our unmarked question
for roses, iris, tulips

in their purple season, dropped
to deep red whispering

the way that flowers speak
and seeds spring airborne

in concert with insects
and birds and rattling winds

as if our thoughts were petals
and our roots a tangle of

garden spirits
beneath the damp grass

us leaning over
engaged in ancestral
conversation, our
faces to the sun.

The following chap book titles are currently available:
For more information email brennan.don@gmail.com

Try Those Shoes (Poems by Don Brennan), 2006, 48 pages, $5.00
Excerpt: Let Me Fly(pg. 5)

whenever you can/Old World/just let me fly...don't send us to Heaven...please keep us here/around you/part of the fire and smoke/energy and love cycle/until you die yourself/and fly off to Planet Heaven...

Prelude To Uncertainty (Poems by Don Brennan), 2007, 44 pages, $5.00
Excerpt: Word Of Mouth(pg. 35)

The way his jaw swings/somebody could hang it on a porch/spend summer evenings waving to passers by/...eagle with a broken jaw needing heroin now/more than all the oil leaking out of the Euro into/golden bathtubs of Dubai, and looka there, Dubya/and Condi fluffing one another with baby powder/about to give birth to twins...

SEASONAL WORK (poems by Don Brennan), 2006, 48 pages, $5.00
Excerpt: DETOUR pg. 24

For a creature locked out of a cafe, motivation is of
course irrelevant, as are doubts, self or otherwise...

it's not a question of departure. We need
shelter, the canine and I, a place to feel safe
before it's too late...

Leavenworth Poets Summit V (Edited by Don Brennan) 2007, 42 pages, $5.00 donation to Central City Hospitality House.
Excerpt: Live Concert In The Tenderloin by Charles Curtis Blackwell(pg. 5)

A pigeon does that strut thing/Marco Polo traveler/S.F. beat...This brother brings the stereo tuned to a jazz station/To this concrete park with rod iron fence/freedom in the park/Catching the sound there of the/Pause, stand, listen/In the middle of hardcore deprivation...

TRACKS: Leavenworth Street Anthology (Edited by Don Brennan) 2007, 39 pages, $5.00
donation to Central City Hospitality House.

Excerpt: A Kind Of Death by Marsha Campbell (pg. 27)

We confine ourselves to a small room.
The small room of your mind.

Heavy curtains close in on us
and there is no light.

Your speaking voice was gathered
by the dust of the night.

Listening became a chore
until I could touch you no more.

I begged for you to open up the door.

Please send cash, check or money order (plus $1 for shipping by regular mail) to:

Don Brennan Chapbooks
2959 26th Street
San Francisco, CA
94110.