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For D. B.

For D. B.

I wish I knew enough to write
a novel about your life,
but I don't.

I don't
know all the details. Rife,
the ones are that I remember. The night

you drank too much and spoke
about Nam--the time they caught you
in the North & scarred your face--

would be chapter three.
The time you went to a bar
would be a chapter, too.

A big man sat down beside you
& every other customer moved quick, got far
back, watching. As for me,

I would have sat calm, protecting your back.
It is said you turned toward him and said,
"You must think you're tough."

"I am tough,
tougher than you," he said
& pushed himself up & back

from the bar stool. You took an ear,
always a left ear, from your shirt
pocket & took a bite out of it

then dropped it
into the big man's drink. He could not hurt
you for he was puking but he could hear

you say:
"I didn't think
you were all that tough."

Author notes


Written June 15th, 2006

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Comments

1 - 5 of 5

  • Lute
    October 25, 2006
    Edit | Reply
    Harrumph. One the best ones you have done. I hawk iffen I want to. Peanut gallery anyways.

  • mtpoet
    June 19, 2006
    Edit | Reply
    You are correct, Don... This is different in tone & subject matter, but a poem that I needed to write. It is a story that was told to me by a martial arts instructor who once was my bodyguard.
    Your picturing of lute is apt...
    Thanks for reading & commenting with such clarity.

  • EdP
    June 19, 2006
    Edit | Reply

    TOOTHSOME

    well.

    I love those crispy cinnamon ears you get at those horrible fests and carnivals. oily sweet. sugar that sparkles in the opressive summer streets.

    this one's twisty, it is. stands out as different from what you normally post here, in tone. in subject, obviously.

    Right though. Good as ever.

    I imagine lute as a vendor at the ballpark, hawking poems to the disinterested patrons. "POEMS HERE, gET YER POEMS, PEOPLE. POEMS. "

  • mtpoet
    June 19, 2006
    Edit | Reply
    Lute, I appreciate you for this comment... Thanks so much...

  • Lute
    June 17, 2006
    Edit | Reply

    Poem worthy

    dagnabit, where some comments!
    when you find humanity you eclaim:

    "yes! there it is!
    Perhaps you clap your eyes
    and laugh like a child, anything but running out the door as though you saw nothing at all.

    Poem here People.
1 - 5 of 5