Remembering The Past

The sequel to a previously published poem

Two days after he left Sparta,

he found his way to a place where

roaming charges are half the price

per minute when stacked against

the current price for a gallon of

super unleaded gasoline.

Located about eighty football fields

south of the line called seven-squared

and west from the most northwesterly

point in the former 321st Missile Squadron,

and named coincidentally with the actress

who once played a mermaid in the year that

Orwell predicted we'd be slaves to an entity

called Big Brother, is the place where the best

faux Mexican food is served in a twenty-mile radius.

Or so his stomach says.

While dining on a heart attack special

made of fart medicine, flour blankets and

potato turds and slathered with red, white

and orange artery cloggers, he noticed the

memorabilila from past generations.

The trophies from speech meets long gone,

basketball tournaments long played,

graduation ceremonies long commenced,

and a pair of sticks from the first hockey

tournament ever played at the state level.

And his father-in-law made an almost

ironic comment about the display itself,

that it was missing Catherwood's gold metal.

And he had to wonder as they drove away

from the place with Daryl's monikers if

Max Brooks's oral history was really

a prophecy awaiting its due time.

The land around them is only fruitful

when loved and tended by men and

women who want to feed humankind,

and yet it would become wild prairie

if left to its own devices 

after a few decades.

And it would consume Daryl's moniker

if the History Channel's scenarios had

any validity, any truth value whatsoever.

The mean age of Daryl's moniker is

primarily of those who served during

the Vietnam conflict, and possibly

the Korean conflict.

The monument in the nondescript building

near the almost naturally reclaimed rail line

is the last monument to their particular triumphs

before it becomes a sarcophagus to triviality

since the younger generations tended to flee

in a southerly direction like geese or

elderly people would in the winter.

But their flight was permanent,

like the process of erosion does

to granite mountains.

Only those dedicated to

rapeseed production stay

in the parts nowadays.

And he wonders why he is 

waiting for the sky to clear up 

and for the fields to dry out 

so he can participate 

in the raping of the fields 

with seed that produce yellow 

flowers and smell like dirty diapers 

when ripe, and why his bitchy muse 

led him to this piece of waterlogged

real estate.

Years earlier, he ventured to

a random spot on the topological

map that carried a pejorative for

Daryl's anatomy, but that's bogus

because the hamlet was founded

eight-squared years 

prior to her birth.

And now, he sits watching a

rerun of a show where 

Operation Comescu is about

to commence in Prague just

as his spouse drives up carrying

packages of frozen taco and

garlic chicken alfredo pizza.

Sometimes, random occurrences

have deeper meanings and

sometimes they don't.

And when they do, 

the poetry writes itself.

And maybe that's the point

of remembering the past, so

the future can continue.

Reviews

[Hello, Goodbye]

sir surely you jest.. great narrate and curious method..