The Good, The Bad & The Beautiful

Miscellany, Poetry, and More Hot Air

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Quite the original hairdo. Somebody shot that sitting behind me in the old ‘68 Fury at some point in the mid 70s. Pam probably. Most likely we were headed somewhere to do something outside, the endless playscape for mostly-broke hippies who spent what they had on food, gas, booze and dope. We “woke” to live the day either working or playing. We also spent coin on books, music, and movies. Nature and art, experiences and stories are what we lived for. Time seemed eternal then.

The longer we are here, the harder it becomes to ignore the inevitable end of this wonderland, so we fill the dull moments with more chores and plans, activities and creations, stuff to avoid the elephant in the mirror. We begin the retrospective spin of our life story and the glories retold of our mindless, ping-pong youth. It is fun to run those streets and trails again, probably more fun and certainly safer than it was at the time. For what is this life but one long anxiety tour? If you have really worked at strengthening your ego and shitting yourself, you may conclude that’s not the case for you. If not, bravo! You go for it! Forgive me if I don’t put much stock in your view. I think it’s great if you are happy and that confident sense of certainty and security works for you. But it’s all beyond me, and you, when you is me, maybe, or maybe not. My “sense of certainty” becomes god-like in a poem. So it’s my refuge, my place to be.

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The Book of You

Who are you: that little girl
jumping rope in an Ethiopian 
refugee camp; a black father
identifying his unarmed son 
covered by a sheet, shot by a gun;
the single mom wiping tables, 
taking orders and lip for tips 
from dead-eyed truckers,
hashing the all-night shift?

Your days play out whatever
your role and accumulate like
calendar pages torn off and 
thrown away, meaningless, 
gone except to you. You do 
what's in front of you, gauge it 
accordingly, choose your level
of love to fear, of flight or fight,
how to squeeze out another day

Into another year, opening your 
eyes to sunrise, that awareness 
you are still here in this realm, 
noting what's around you, where 
you are, and knowing it's going to 
end. Some of you have survived 
on air, water, and scraps of love,
lived daily on a diet of fear, yet
the dream of hope, lost to you

So long ago, is buried deep in
your tissues, blood, and bones.
Whatever this is, whatever path
you tread, tortured or privileged,
you are alone and connected to it, 
this dream, this being, this here.
You gain love by giving it away 
today before the next show you 
cannot know—until the light fades.

	for Chris La Tray

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I don’t even remember what precipitated this poem or the dedication to my friend Chris La Tray, but what else are we going to stand by besides love? Love is the only reason to keep playing this game, moving along, going with the flow, until it ends for us, when our perception exits the scene, that point when those who loved us sit around and talk about us while quietly contemplating their own mysterious future end, that surprise party with the grim (or hopefully not-so-grim) reaper.

I guess what I needed to do here was write my way into something I haven’t figured out how to write about yet, the recent death of an old friend. I haven’t really taken the time to grieve him yet. A few surges, waves, emotional rushes I’ve managed to stuff, but no real tears yet. Of course that was his style. He wasn’t a man who showed his hand. The closest I’ve come to contemplating his departure was listening to Mark’s step-son’s radio program dedicated to his step-dad where he played the music Mark loved: Dylan & the Dead, Roger Miller & Leon Redbone, from Johnny Cash to Joe Walsh, Woody Guthrie to Roy Rodgers. Yep, my “Happy Trails” dead pal was a Mark, too. Mark Hanson. He moved to Alberton, Montana, from upstate New York in the summer of 1971. It was the fall of my senior year in high school and my hot girl friend (who I’ve managed to string along for 50+ years) and I were stashing beer at the mouth of N(otorious?) Gulch, named after that common slur for Black Americans. Standing knee-deep in the creek at the end of the culvert that ran under the interstate highway before the stream dumped into the Clark Fork, I secured the goods with rocks and looked up to see this young guy watching me, smiling. It was that little grin, the look in his eyes, and the brief introduction and conversation about who he was and what was up, that made me think: I like this kid, and if he sticks around, we’ll probably become friends. And he did. And we did.

During fifty years much happened, and most of it as far as we were concerned was entertaining and time well-spent. He was really independent. Back then he’d appear like a ghost materializing out of nowhere. In and out, here and gone. He’d read Thoreau and heard a Different Drummer. At the risk of exposing the shit I used to write in my twenties that I called poetry, here is one of those that tried to capture the tongue in cheek enigma of Mark Hanson in 1980, a character and good friend.

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Save the Animals

you'd see his shadow
first
on the wall,
the hat,
the coat,
but no cigar.
he'd appear
like a cat
stalking prey,
Mondo McDeath,
the man with no name,
the ghost of
Clit Westwood.

sporting a seedy
red beard
and a twinkle
in his red eye,
you'd notice
the bulge 
of his black
powder hog-leg,
six rounds of
molten metal,
tucked away
under his Army
field officer's
trench coat.

Mondo padded around
in worn out
Converse tennis shoes
reeking of
his hog's gas.
a quiet man,
a mystery man,
he usually rode
alone.

save the mask,
save the animals,
for Mondo's sake,
for Clit's,
and those before them.
save the mask
for the honest men,
the trusted friends
who always win
but never collect.

save the mask
for the guys
like Clit
who live every day 
like they were in
a foxhole
in France
in '44, 
and you'll feel
better
until you go
back to work,
and they want you
to lie 
again.

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As goofy and awkward as this youthful poem feels to me, it still speaks to the personality of Mark: his independence, his sense of humor, his disdain for authority, and his undying loyalty to a friend. Mark gave me a copy of “Mondo Montana,” the edition of Frank Ponikvar’s Missoula Comix with the picture of the Lone Ranger on the cover, and the campaign fund raiser to “Save the Mask” inside. It was a satiric take on the grievance between Clayton Moore and the television network over who had the rights to the “masked Lone Ranger.” Of course it had to do with money. What doesn’t.

Mark worked for the railroad until it went bankrupt in 1980. Then he got married and moved back to New York. He drove truck, worked in the oil fields, and in the construction trades until he retired in Montana 30 years later where he continued his affiliation with the union long after he was done working. He was a leftist and a realist who did what he needed to do to survive, smiling as much as he could because on a lot of levels things were not all that good in Mark’s world. He buried three of his four sons from his first marriage, all dying in vehicle related accidents through no fault of their own. And I always thought the irony of that alone, that the sons of a motor-head, a NASCAR fan, a man who knew vehicles and automotive history inside-out in the detail that Mark did and had passed that information onto his kids, would see them die, one after one over three decades, victims of automobile incidents. After losing the first one, then divorcing his first wife and returning to Montana, Mark remarried a woman with two sons. Mark and Lucinda then had two children of their own. And in another Job-like twist of fate a few years ago, Lucinda took sick and died in less than a couple weeks.

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the good, the bad & the beautiful 

let's be brutally honest:
the only real truth
is death. it is
the only thing
we can count on,
the only thing we know
(& can’t know) 
for certain. it is 
the defining moment
for all of us.
until our untimely exit,
this is it—
make the most of now. 
when it’s time, 
we leave 
our scorecards
behind. those left
will rate & file them 
with the rest, keep digging
inside, searching for
molecular solutions,
the gauzy soul,
or climbing on rooftops
to find some proof
of Galileo in the stars.
we are stars of wonder,
stars of light,
stars exploding in the night.
death takes the living
down a notch, reminds us
we are cosmic dust, all 
made of the same stuff, 
traveling the same highway,
driving into that dark
we cannot know
until it becomes
our time to go.
most of us don’t want to die, 
but the truth is:
we’re always ready.

       for Mark and the Hanson Clan

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Broken hearted? Maybe Mark’s heart had finally had enough of it. He died of a heart attack a week ago. And I have been replaying my memories, the images in my head. All the wonderfully stupid shit we did, and that tough-guy, button-pushing humor we carried, handed down to us by the hardscrabble generation that raised us to be “men” whatever the fuck that meant. That steeled presence that denied death an opening, the guy that went down fighting, the soldier’s mask. We discovered marijuana which really helped lighten us up, took that mean edge off the senses of humor we’d inherited, intensified our appreciation of literally everything: music, food, humor, sex. You name it, and weed made it even better! Man! I chuckle looking back on it, us, growing (up?) older. It gave us perspective that we didn’t have before. I know we were kinder and gentler than those assholes before us because of psychedelics. And I say that about them, those hard-hearted old men, with reverence. We learned from who we came from, and as my old man said about all dads (thinking about his dad), “You gotta like (I don’t ever recall him using the word “love” in regard to the people or things that he obviously loved) your old man because he’s The Old Man, the only one you’ll ever have. He’s your old man.”

The worst thing I can imagine happening to me would be losing one of my sons. Mark lost one of his at each stage of life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. So it haunts me thinking about him, even when I’m trying to recall all the the hilarious adventures and great conversations we had together over fifty years. I keep going back to all that because I feel compelled to write an elegy for Mark. I liked him. He was a friend. I don’t know what that means or if I’ll “see” him again or why I’m driven to scribble this down as if I can capture him for all the story-addicted folks like you and me, but trying to pay tribute to him in words is a way of passing the time, sorta like staring at water, the sky, or maybe wrenching on cars. If we can do what we enjoy doing, that’s love, and spending time around the people we feel comfortable with, that’s true love, that’s easy street. And easy is where I like to be. I wish you love in this tragic dance.

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your truth

belongs to you
own it 
it's yours
don't deny it

or lie to hide it
trust that 
it's your truth
nobody else's

let others
have their shit
you don't need
to agree with it

and if you can't
find peace
or respect
their truths

walk away
you won't
die or live
your life well

if you keep
shitting yourself
you can't 
love fully

if you don't
follow your heart
honor your gut-
feeling honestly

and don't be
afraid to change
your mind
embrace the new

truths you find
just be
true to who 
you are today

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