A LOUSY MIRROR: #28

*This library is in no way connected to the HSA

Robert D. Wilson's

Over 3 decades of

Haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka, haiga, and free verse Performance Poetry unlike anything you've read before.

Uplift Svetlana Marislov

as she battles an aggressive

brain cancer.

Her name means LIGHT

and we need more light in

this world.

the softness

of petals treading

dreams

robert d. wilson

teach me,

nature, the dance

of echoes . . .

the song of silence

painting canyons

share with me

a breath speaking

petals

where to sit

in a storefront window

housing

mannequins on

leave from their senses

stupid duck . . .

sitting on a tree limb

with wrens

tomorrow,

a tree sculpted

with words . . .

waiting for leaves

placed between pages

a hard rain . . .

the hollow song of

bamboo flutes

is this the

song the wind sings

when waves crash . . .

and dreams fill a

young girl's pail?

and you . . .

painting umbrellas

with noah

rise child,

from mother's womb;

breathe deeply . . .

grasp the light reaching

into your heart

from a small

hut, a loom spinning

moonlight

cement blocks . . .

a spring i'm not

quite sure of

I too

have lived alone,

speaking to

the inanimate

like good friends

red moon . . .

sharing my walk

with a dragon

morning walk . . .

i look for snipers

in a world

lit by candles

always burning

my wife's

afraid of you, mouse . . .

mid-winter

for hours

she stared at a

grave stone

talking to bones

that whispered

i look for

her outside my head . . .

sipping spring

this morning

a gravestone asked

me to find

its rightful place

in a daydream

floating trash . . .

push bubbles under

a vendor's store

i felt safe this

morning walking

past gravestones . . .

the morning sky

half gray, half blue

mother, was

that you last night,

patching clouds?

like the wine

i can't drink, your

breath speeds past

me, leaving words

i reach out for

my wife sleeps,

swimming in the

echo of water

long journey . . .

ashes of the

burning hut

clasp hands with those

who lived there before

upside down,

star gazing between

your legs

the smell of

a dead mouse in

our room; the

faerie tale i

dreamt in 3-d

the dirt on

my feet write haiku . . .

spring dreams

the flat sound

of a bargirl cursing . . .

in the

echoes caught between

heavy traffic

take me, leaf,

above the wheat grass

smile of autumn

i forgot

the leaves floating

past me

are only dreams

painting memories

bright fish?

am i too only

a winter dream?

like a wren

beating dawn with

her wings . . .

your song an odd

one smoothing stones

the scent of

darkness between a

wintry dream

she sees spring

weave itself through

gray clouds . . .

pink baby rats waiting

for the lizard's tongue

watching

rose petals struggle . . .

sunday morning

is it time

for me to give back

to the earth

the clouds in my chest

dancing with words?

can spring paint dreams

on a young boy's chest?

muddied feet

how can it

be, darkness sculpting

dreams into

into tin dragons

dipped in sewage?

like human

candles, the stars scraping

darkness

robert d. wilson

cherry blossoms . . .

their little ones!

When I was in Vietnam in 1968, widows of fallen soldiers came into Saigon to

work as bargirls.

It is one of the poorest countries on earth, both then and now. Earning a living is very difficult, especially for a single mother. One bargirl I met, went to the University of Saigon during the day majoring in Economics. It was her dream to one day be self-supportive and to give her children

and extended family a good life.

Boating upriver

into a dream saved

for nights like this,

when alice sets

fire to wonderland

All of us stationed in Dong Tam at some time or another were assigned to river patrol. This entailed navigating narrow, brown water river ways in Vietnamʼs Mekong Delta through dense vegetation, partially obscured villages, and blind turns. We knew we being watched. If we passed it was impossible to ascertain if the villagers we were for or against us. The enemy didnʼt wear uniforms. Most of the time, these forays were uneventful. Sometimes, when we least expected it to, all hell would break loose, tossing us into the bowels of a dragon mirroring Danteʼs Inferno. Flame throwers belching fire; flashes of light; tracers; automatic gunfire, mortars; shrapnel; blood; out-of-control heartbeats, interwoven with the scent of death. While some of my friends in America were living the good life: cruising the boulevard, surfing, attending concerts, dancing, dating, and working towards goals, was in a jungle on the other side of the planet dancing with Alice

in the Wonderland Amusement Park.

elephant grass . . .

a gnat whispering,

“youʼre next”

I remember the wisps of air shooting past me

like gnats as if it were yesterday. Only it was

38 years ago and I was an 18 year old sailor

serving my country on a small base in the

Mekong Delta region of the former Republic of

South Vietnam in a war that would change my

life forever.

endless summer

a shadow pretending

to be a god

We fought a war in a country we knew

little to nothing about. South Vietnam

was not in our high school textbooks.

And there was no Discovery Channel

my peers and I to exotic cultures. We

were, in essence, the personification

of Robert Hienleinʼs A Stranger in A

Strange Land, introducing a poor

country ravaged by a thousand years

of war, corruption, and military

dictatorships, the people of this

Southeast Asian country wanted to

be saved and delivered to the promise

land theyʼd heard abouts in the news

and entertainment media.

American soldiers were looked upon

as saviors by many Vietnamese people.

were the embodiment of the life theyʼd

dreamed of. Many naively thought

weʼd win the war and turn their country

into a miniature United States. We

were not saviors, however, and we

did not transform their countryʼs

economy into one like ours. And we did not

win the war.

Bowing to political pressure in America,

our Armed Forces deserted the South

Vietnamese people, leaving in their

wake a bloodbath for those who

supported our country and the

dictatorship weʼd helped place into

power and supported.

We returned

home from the dragon to

a new war . . .

students killed by men

trained for vietnam

How can i forget the day I disembarked from an airliner at Travis Air Force Base, seeing the U.S.A. for the first time in almost a year. Vietnam was behind me now, or so I thought. My buddies and I were given 48 hours of shore leave before we had to return to Treasure Island Naval Base below the Oakland Bay Bridge.

We went to the cheapest hotel we could find in one of the roughest neighborhoods in San Francisco. We headed for a bar

that was darker than hell, or perhaps, it was the regurgitation of Dante who'd had his filled of hell. A man was beating a woman on the floor and I was advised

tomind my own business or risked being stabbed, It was a Black bar and I was the only White guy. I didn't drink back then, which was an embarrassment to my buddies, and ordered a soda. Eyes rolled. If they'd sold opium, hash,or weed, I would have partaken in a microsecond.

That night we checked into our rooms. Rated triple ZZZ. The rooms smelled of urine and a cheap ammonia spray. We smoked a joint (we'd pirated some home) and fell asleep for 25 hours.

We rarely slept a full night in Nam, and when we did, it was a light sleep, never knowing when we'd be attacked. Unless you've been in a war, you have no idea what a soldier experiences even if you watch every was movie made. War is reality. Screens face seats and boxes of popcorn smothered with butter.

Later that night, we went to the Fillmore Auditorium, where we heard was the place to for good music and a hip time.

Before I shipped over to the Mekong Delta, Nancy Sinatra was singing, These Boots Are Made For Walking.

The Fillmore was Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, a circus of this and that

emceed by the Phantom of the Opera.

Walls were melting, people were melting,

a thousand silent movies draped over Janis Joplin and Big Brother and The Holding Company, jugs of red mountain wine passed from hand to hand laced liberally with LSD, weaving through a

crowd that looked like toons trying on outfits in a movie studio costume room on speed.

Girls were dancing ecstatically, some without tops, Dali's brush dripping like a young stud's wet dream, in and out of the chards of lights going this way and that, undulating satyrs in an asylum, the cha cha cha of Hidy Hidy Hi, Hidy Hidy Ho,

and the cops stood by, enhaling the thick cloud of cannabis.

America had changed. It'd be a couple of days before we discovered how much.