Hallmark Love
We’re growing older, as we should,
married more than 50 years now,
but it doesn’t mean in geezerhood
we’ve lost any of our amazing wow.
We’ve seen too many tropical moons,
experienced several sleepy lagoons,
yet there’s no less love, none that we lack,
and we still love each other to the moon and back.
Memorial Day 2021
Thinking about how it should be this year,
on the cusp of pandemic and near normal.
Reminded that it’s about the fallen,
not all the passed of the past,
just the warriors, deserving of decorations,
holding fast to the original Decoration Day.
Remembering it’s not about the current troops,
hoping to not hear “Happy Memorial Day”,
no matter how well intended.
This is not Christmas,
not a day for glee, not founded in joy,
surely not only for backyard barbecues,
though it’s understandable to want them,
here on the way back to normal.
It’s Memorial Day 2021,
and it’s important to notice it exists,
to recall why,
not allowing politics or philosophy to
keep us from rendering heartfelt thoughts,
reflecting, respecting, appreciating, honoring,
remembering the service and sacrifices of the fallen.
Those who survived their own war,
at home or in some distant land,
in uniform or mufti,
have one great battle remaining,
one great responsibility,
honoring with loyalty and respect
those who lost their own final battle.
It is the duty of the living
to remember the dead,
to feel blessed by their gift,
to never forget,
even as the nation seeks to heal.
The fallen deserve nothing less.
It’s Barbara Paicopulos Day!
We’re well past 2020,
a fact which pleases us plenty,
and nearly halfway through ‘21,
I’m thinking it’s time to have more fun.
Even though it’s still SoCal May,
with its usual murky gray,
nothing negative need get in your way,
making tracks toward a positive day.
With a little grit and determination,
you can have a marvelous creation,
starting with your birthday, a fabulous date,
with dinner plans nothing short of great.
I needn’t overly exercise my brain to explain,
since it’s all so perfectly plain.
You’ve reached a remarkable age,
and in our house you’re truly the rage.
I’ll tell you, because it’s absolutely true,
72 looks great on you.
Current Events
Honoring the day, hoping
to bring light to the darkness,
maybe create something to
cherish, or at least, remember.
Respecting the day, thinking
it’s a good time for
random acts
of joyful beneficence.
Appreciating the day, reminded
to not try too hard to
do big, showy things.
Many little acts of good will do.
Working the garden this day, mindfully,
I’ll go slow, pause, breathe, observe.
Quite Zen.
Of course, I am also quite old.
I have woken this day, gratefully.
What the heck,
I might as well
choose to be happy and love.
Blind Spot
Nothing of import happened yesterday.
Oh, newly named babies were born somewhere, far away,
and many more unnamed people died in distant lands,
mostly naturally, none directly at my hands.
Some remarkable events occurred, so they say.
Might have been a haboob, a fire, or a monsoon flood,
but nothing happened to me, my friends, my blood.
No matter to me, you see, as in bed I lay,
no matter to me, other peoples' joy or woe.
All that mattered were my plans for the day,
areas to clean, a garden to hoe.
Might have been a new war started, so I heard,
but distant sirens don’t affect me, too busy watching birds.
Nothing of import happened yesterday.
What Veterans Voices Means to Me
A few years ago, some online poetic friends I have never met urged me to submit my work to Veterans Voices. I had never been one for submissions, but considered it another growth step in my later life. Now, I am delighted to have made the choice to participate. For a long time, I had lived with the physical damage of a mortar assault, as well as PTSD and panic attack syndrome, including the remorse, shame, fears and anger that accompany them, and cancer from Agent Orange exposure. I had lived like this for decades, until I finally accepted treatment, which provided me with coping skills and the ability to more openly and positively express myself. It was followed by additional personal and spiritual development in what some might refer to as churches or spiritual centers, sort of a graduate school after therapy. One side benefit was a dramatic improvement in my writing, which became more focused, truthful and honest. When one is as imperfect as I, it takes a lot of guts to try to spread hope, inspire faith, promote love, go for broke on what matters to Spirit above. It can be breathtaking, even alarming, to listen to one’s echoes, consult one’s memories. It might even be surprising to recall that which was forgotten, admit that it was suppressed. It can be staggering to say out loud, those words based in reality, ones rooted in blood and bone, in heart and mind. And so one writes, in order to discover what one does not know how to say. It is necessary to go to the center, to the hot, steaming core, to get face to face with grief, sorrow, love, to ask oneself, what am I not willing to reveal, and if I reveal it, share it with others who understand, how will it contribute? Will my words make a difference? As I write this acknowledgment today, I have become a man of many words, but I don’t have enough of them to adequately express my gratitude for the existence of Veterans Voices, a safe place for Veterans of all stripes to participate, a haven in which to continue to grow, alongside my sisters and brothers.
What Veterans Voices Gave Me
Through Veterans Voices
I was blessed with
important personal choices,
essay, art, photo or poem,
of current thoughts and feelings,
and of memories long gone.
I went there to submit,
but then I started to read,
and then I read some more,
fulfilling more than ego need
Seeing the wondrous minds at work there,
the brilliance of their concepts, laid bare,
their surprise endings often haunting,
sometimes a little daunting.
I’m don’t think I’d call it jealousy,
but I do experience ink envy.
I have to wonder why I’d bother,
with so many marvelous pieces each issue,
a million beautiful words in play,
why should I write, submit?
What’s one more poet have to say?
I tell lots of stories, so
that’s no problem, and
it’s too late now to worry about
too much exposure, fear,
regrets or even doubt.
Ultimately, there is only one choice.
I will write because I have a voice.
I will write for the pure expression of life,
about my joys and fears and hopes,
certainly about love,
of the Grace some refer to
as from somewhere else above.
I will write, inspired by the writing of others,
especially by Veterans, my sisters and brothers,
by the natural world in constant motion,
by speechless days at the nearby ocean,
by the sun and the moon,
their setting and rising,
their colors and moods
sometimes surprising.
I will audaciously write of
great hopes, of grand schemes,
daring to be the artist
of my very own dreams.
Not really fearless,
not in any way,
I will write to discover what
I don’t otherwise know how to say.
As age has flattened me,
as humility has claimed me,
I now write more about Spirit,
about oneness, about transition.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
I’m simply sure I will write to be near it.
This. Or Something Better
How far I have come.
How wonderful this life is.
Still, when I look into the mirror,
I sometimes laugh out loud.
I’m funny that way,
recalling that foreign objects
enter oysters to make pearls.
How it is with my many scars.
I don't always
cross bridges
with joy and ease.
I am still a work in progress,
sometimes struggling,
but always thrilled by
my fellow veterans'
achievements and triumphs.
I enjoy seeing their success,
especially because I only
hang out with people I love,
comrades who support me.
I have made many mistakes
but none of them
involved loving too much.
The longer I live,
the more I see
everything is Divinity.
Every thing I have.
Every thing I do.
Every thing I achieve.
Every thing I am.
Guilt, shame, sadness and remorse
moved my past life.
Today, though, as age and experience
have softened and humbled me,
I know that whenever answers elude me,
when success seems to run from me,
even if I forget to be grateful for what I have,
the Grace of Spirit will carry me home.
May Day
The month seems to
have had wings,
writing and reading,
fortunate to be living,
here in America’s Finest City,
where the locals are old,
the snowbirds are grateful,
and the poets have all
been in good form.
A month of satisfying results
of gratitude and generosity,
of many old friends, a new few.
We lived mostly for each new morning,
knowing the poetry gods would laugh
at plans beyond lunch.
Summer’s not yet here,
a few weeks away.
That’s our breath we still see
in front of us some mornings,
leading the way to the coffee,
with the company of our cat, Max.
It’s a grand day to be alive.
See Ya Later
I recall the lack of goodbyes
on my Cancer Tour,
back before I learned
I had it in me as well
how much we laughed,
how little we cried.
There was the prostate in Sonoma,
and the pancreas in Napa,
the brain in the East Bay, pretty bleak,
having inherited its doom
from the lungs and the liver.
There were friends attached
to those afflicted organs,
friends of long standing,
fifty years, more.
I don’t remember
what we talked about.
Talking wasn’t the point, not really.
It was more being and having than doing.
I know that no one said goodbye,
not wanting it to be a final farewell.
I had thought I’d tell them all
about when I died for awhile,
on that hillside in the jungle, far from home.
No one’s ever heard the whole of that.
But it wasn’t about me, so I didn’t.
Nobody knows what to say,
not really, at the moment
of another’s loss.
We all try, come up dry
more so than not.
I don’t know if goodbye is valuable to say,
not as important as
thank you,
I love you,
my life is better because of you,
those you better say in person.
Before you can’t.
