“a million poppies gonna make me sleep”

   

i was going through some old discs and i found one with pictures of bryant’s first deployment to iraq. mostly pictures of guys looking (trying) real tough with their respective weapons. i found this one that defines who my son is, at least in my mind. was it fate that he became a marine, or was it just chance? i might say that it was fate, the marine motto really defines who i think his core being is, semper fidelis. while we see our children grow up we collect all the candid snapshots during their lives. this picture is who i see him as in totality. take the time to define the picture, look at everything and come up with the sum.

in november he will come home and his part in this generation’s “national nightmare” will be over. i love my son, but i hate this fucking war, it has taken his innocence, but we are one of the lucky families, he IS coming home and not as earthly remains. well see if this fucking nightmare haunts him for years to come; i pray not, i also pray for all the victims of my nation’s mess.

so look at the picture and see a flash of the child i remember fishing with on the crosspike, the joker that stripped to his underwear, put on a mask and chased girls on halloween while his friends taped it all, see the kid that was so impressed by the iwo jima monument in washington that he became a u.s. marine, but most of all see the guy who did what he thought he needed to do.

muskogee 1982

muskogee 1982

left kentucky at midnight and drove

all night long just to run away from home

and i drove with an abandon

reckless and barely noticing what passed my window

streaking through west

memphis where those boys 

were killed by some guy 

who had nothing better to do

and finally “oklahoma is ok”

and i believed it because i needed to

i missed the azalea festival in muskogee 

i had no idea what an azalea looked like

but some waitress told me 

as we sipped beer on the edge of the dance floor 

i still remember how my hands felt on her hips

i still wonder what she saw in me when I saw not much

and when i kissed her i felt like i had grown up all at once

honky tonk music fell at our feet

as we tried to understand

where we were going with our lives

and we needed to not make a dent in each other

to touch and part with just memories

i know she must look on me like a snapshot

of a time when her life was simpler

and that was all we ever wanted

Hello world!

ive tried the blogging thing 3 or 4 times before, should i expect that this one wont end in failure too? who the hell knows.

ill try, but no promises made on this end.