January 13, 2010

 A Jack-In-The-Box  World

my landlord 

for the night,walls 

that can't speak

robert d. wilson

©2010

As I said, the America I returned home to was a different America.  Battle lines were drawn. "Normal culture versus Counter culture."  Back in Vietnam I felt like a bad ass savior who was doing the South Vietnamese people  favor, risking my life so the Vietnamese  could enjoy the fruits of democracy.  I was naive, a teenager who believed everything he read in history textbooks and saw on newscasts paid for by big monied sponsors.  I didn't know that The Republic of South Vietnam was ruled by a ruthless dictator who killed thousands of Vietnamese, and ruled with an iron hand where freedom of the press and speech were crimes punishable by death if the dictator disagreed with what was said or written.

I also didn't know that Shell Oil Company and Firestone Rubber had big holdings there, nor did I know that South Vietnam was a mineral rich wonderland compared to North VIetnam, and that it contained approximately 90% of the world's titanium.  And poorly educated me, don't believe what you read in high school and middle school textbooks, and half of what you read in college texts: one of my degrees is in World History); the country had been at war for over a thousand years with bordering countries, China, Japan, the French, and Communist North Vietnam who desperately wanted a piece of the pie.  The North Vietnamese speak a different dialect and look down on the South Vietnamese as a lower class of people. Although the French divided the Vietnam into two nations, the South and the North, the reason the Northerners wanted to reunite the two nations into one was not a patriotic or charitable act.  They were lusting for the riches they lacked in the North.

I remember asking an old papa san, a long white bearded leathery skinned man dressed in black silk pajamas and a straw cone hat if he was glad the United States were fighting for his freedom?  I didn't expect the answer he gave me.  "We don't like you Americans and we don't like the North Vietnamese.  We just want everyone to leave us alone so we can farm and feed our families."  That was a sentence that germinated into a whole new conceptualization of the War our government labeled a Police Action.  

Two weeks after returning to the States, I volunteered to live in an AWOL (Absent Without Leave) sanctuary for military deserters opposed to participating in what they felt was an un-just war, housed in a two story Unitarian Church.  I quickly became the vice chairman of the sanctuary's vice-chairperson, which also served as a commune where LSD, Mescaline, and Pot ran freely and free sex was openly practiced at a time when AIDS and HIV didn't exist.

Every girl was on the pill,  and laying on surrealistic pillows with white rabbits and Mad Hatters were the drill of the day.  None of us worked, food was donated by the parishioners, and we made national news.  I got stoned day and night

Sang Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane in her song:

                                                              

"One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small,

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all.

Go ask Alice

When she's ten feet tall.

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall,
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call."

One day early in the morning before dawn, FBI, GTF, Marine Police, and the county Sheriff's office broke into the Church (I guess sanctuary was outdated by then, the Hunchback of Notre Dame long dead. They woke us up in our various bedrooms, I was naked having sex with a pretty hippy girl . . . the officers rude, pushy demanding, and in a hurry.  This had to be a flash lightening before dawn raid to avoid publicity as they were raiding a church, which would rile up a lot of people . . . without press coverage, no one would take the word of long haired, oddly dressed hippies, most of them stoned.  The various law enforcement agencies would have time to doctor up press releases that would make them look good and generous small space if any in the newspapers.  I'll never forget the look on one of the Marine deserters staring at us from the back of a Sheriff's car, with fear in his eyes . . . he would be tortured, I've seen such torture, and be turned into a zombie-like soldier who's every move will be controlled by the blowing of a whistle and sarcastic, cruel laughter.  The statutes of the U.S. Constitution was null and void for servicemen in brigs and prisons in that era.  


Neither were they applicable to war protesters.  I remember a group of young adults and almost adults, of which I was a part, (we consisted of approximately 15 to 20 people) who met at an Orange County, California public park to sing anti-war songs. It wasn't an organized event.   Other then dressing a little differently, we did nothing a church group might do . . . sang songs and shared our feelings.  There was no amplification, our actions peaceful, and none of us peed on trees or smoked dope.  30 minutes into the sing-in, a trio of policemen walked uo to us and asked, as if they didn't know) if we had a permit to have a rally at the park.  A rally consisting of 15 to 20 people?  I told the officers that we weren't having a rally that we met to sing songs against the war, share our feelings, nothing that a church group wouln't do except for the theme of the songs we sang.  They said we had to break up or be arrested.  Immediately we were herded by a larger group of city policemen and women onto a small two lane street behind the park.  Other war protestors and hippies (were there any for the war?) saw what was happening and began complaining, calling our removal from the park a breach of our rights (which was a correct assessment), and joined us.  The police herded us faster and faster, and when one girl fell on the ground, four policemen held her down spread eagle while a fourth cop clubbed her with a baton.  We exploded and started throwing rocks at these bullies in uniform, the girl's body bleeding, her voice yelling out for help.  We turned on the cops.  Our group which had grown bigger and bigger.  The cops knew they were out manned and fled.  Ten minutes later a Swat team came with tear gas and rubber bullets . . . All because a group of peaceful young people met informally in a public park to sing songs and share their beliefs

"And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you're going to fall,

Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call."

Yes, the America I'd left had changed or, more probable, I'd changed in the 11 months I'd served in Vietnam.  During that time, young people throughout America were changing their beliefs, losing faith in a dream that appeared to be filled with holes and was a smoke screen for America's rich.  They became in a way, lost; explorers  looking for an alternative to the pablum they'd been spoon fed by Doctor Spock and the Saturday Evening Post.  They had brothers, boyfriends, and school mates who lost their lives or were maimed for life for what?  A war we turned tail on and deserted, leaving those who depended on us to face Godless communists; an Armed Forces whose members more often than not, called the Vietnamese, gooks.


Welcome once more to the troubled mind of a man who couldn't be politically correct if he wanted to,. A man who offends the norm, and feels ill at ease with people, especially women, who at one time were some of his closest friends; a man who has no friends here in the Philippines, whose wife sees him as . . . something, I'm not sure what.  Recently almost my entire staff at Simply Haiku revolted against me behind my back and said publically that I was a tyrant who bullied his staff, even though I'd rarely talked with them and usually when I did, I complimented them.  Maybe some day I'll see the light and realize I'm Dr, Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, or, at least, The Monster that Devoured Cleveland.  I give and get nothing much in return.  I dislike Christmas and my birthday, and want just to live my final days on this planet, in peace and harmony; something I haven't felt since the day I landed in Saigon.  Go ask Alice, my alter ego.

young girls . . .

walk into a web

shouting, "summer!"

read again

the stories you read

to me when

i was a mirror

easily molded

cheap brandy . . .

young fathers toast

poverty

in a dream

i slipped out of

your womb . . .

under an elm tree

made of paper

traffic!

the tango of busses

chasing dawn

local girls

give themselves to

fat kanos . . .

like candy bars

without thought of braces

morning dawn . . . .

i listen to the stars

speak spanish

does she dream,

the bridge in the field

bowing to

the god she pours ulam*

on every day?

*ulum: a food topping spooned over rice

early spring  . . .

sanity in a pool

of vomit

the farmer

takes a soil sample

every month . . .

the lord of rice

eating snails

acid trip . . .

driving to big sur

in the fog

later, when

the water clears and

stars get dressed,

we can speak about

the plan i have

strong winds . . .

sweeping the pathway

for summer

what is it

about the guilt

you feel?

i too, wrestle guilt

in my own vomit

shadow calls

on me to climb trees . . .

strong wind

why they call

it here a brown-out

makes no sense . . .

when i close my eyes

hues float past me sighing

i'd trade

places with you now . . .

leaving spring

in the mute

night of a thousand

mornings . . .

thoughts paint short lived

canvases that melt

scatter my

ashes in in a tea cup

and drink me . . .

girls sell their

bodies to the highest

bidder . . .

not knowing the hell

unseen on cable t.v.

it was the

thing to fuck the world . . .

that summer

i watched

myself on t.v.

in the den

while detectives

seached for marijuana

live t.v. . . .

the summer i took

lsd

the mental

ward in my mind

unmanned . . .

all the workers

calling in sick

ocean breeze . . .

a cloudy sky woven

with seagulls

she asks for a

blackberry when I'm most

vulnerable . . .

thinking i don't know

what she's up to

robert d. wilson
@2009