finish my stories

Long, long, long ago, First Peoples knew that every rock, river, tree, bird, and animal had spirit. Every wave, wind, or vent in the ground had spirit. People got spirit by way of listening, seeing, feeling, tasting, ... through the inner eye, for those who knew how to look with it. The people shared this spirit through atookwakun , or “stories of wonder.”

Grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers, mothers,other elders, sometimes even older sisters, passed on these tales to children, until very recently, before the Age of Television, and the Advent of the Information Economy. You who are reading, or you over here, who are listening, may have seen that young folk these days—many of them anyway, want to watch tv, all the time staring at the boob tube, the idiot box. Or they listen to their music on some media, what they call “See These” or even “Eye Pods,” “Am Pee Trees,” and other such such things.

When I went north, then east, then north some more, leaving the Memphis south of Cairo, I began to learn that not all the People had been killed or driven west of the Mississippi. I got work raking blueberries in Downeast Maine, where I soon learned that if you had any hope of getting a ride, as you thumbed and prayed your way along the highways and byways, it was from tradesmen, Hippies, Mexicans, and First Peoples. I met Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Malecite, Micmac, and other very native Americans and Canadians. So hear now what I am about to pass on to you:

In the beginning of time, there was just forest and sea, sky and sometimes fire. No animals, no people, were no where.

Then Gluskap came, from where, I can only say it was from somewhere in the sky. I like to think it was from the other side of the Horsehead Nebula. I don’t know. Some say, like Nanabozhó, he was born of a woman fallen, a woman fallen from the sky or the moon. Others say that he was an intreprid Irishman, a Black Irish or a Tinker. Still others say that millenia later, he was reborn as Alfred E. Newman. But that is another story.

Anyway, what the People do know is that he came with a Doppelganger named Malsum, a real bad ass if there ever was one. So yeah, the twins Gluskap and Malsum arrived in a large stone canoe, like the one St. James floated on to Spain in, but instead of staying around that peninsula, with its crazy mix of Basque, Celt, Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Jew, Catalonian, Goth, Vandal… wait a minute, this is about Gluskap and creation. But I am digressing & getting ahead of myself.

So Gluskap and Malsum float from the east, or northeasty, and they anchor the canoe at the point furtherst to the east. He called the island Uktamkoo. Gluskap and Malsome anchored the canoe, but a storm blew up because Gluskap had irritated Santa Barbara on his way past the Canary Islands. The storm overturned the moored canoe, making it into the peninsula we know today to be Newfoundland. This place was where Gluskap first made his lodge, or like you wasicu love to say, his wigwam.

Gluskap wasn’t a fancy pants, even if he was a fancy dancer. He walked, he talked, he lived like just another man. Only he was twice as tall as the tallest man, and three times as strong. He had heaps of good powerful medicine. He never got sick, made love to anything though he never got married, never aged, and never dies. He had a powerful belt made of leather with wampum he sewed on it himself.

Malsum was also a very big being, with the head of a wolf and the body of an Egyptian. He knew medicine too, but used it for bad pupose. You can say he was “the Father of Root Magic.” Yes, he invented voodoo. You know, santoria, witchcraft, black magick.

When Gluskap first came to the Maritimes, the weather was warm, partly cloudy, high in the upper seventies with some gusts of wind from the west.

As he set about, looking to see what he could see, and do what he could do, if Malsum would only leave him the heck alone, the air was redolent of tararack, hemolck, spruce, birch… Out of the pieces of rock he made “The Little People” (The megumwessos,/b> didn’t I say some thought he was from Irish.

Megymwèsos as the people later came to call them, were like the Leprechauns of Ireland today. From among them he befriended one called Marten, a wily creature who was agile and intelligent like Mink, but yet also tough and wise like Badger. Martin’s was also a bit of a dog’s body but I think was always the apple of the great sachem’s eye. This short fellow’s name is Maarten or Martin. When he treats other badly, some call him polecat. Others call him “you old skunk,” or “effin’ bandit”

[This story first appeared in unfinished form at www.allpoetry.com, in the storywrite section.

Sergeant Mike Penn wakes up before the alarm clock, as always. I am who I am, he thinks. If only I’d joined the Navy, as did my uncle James, then what would my life be like? Ah, vanities of vanities, he hears in the voice of his grandma Mary ‘MAC’ Connaughssy. MAC. What could the world expect from a man who’s had a grandma everyone calls MAC? He searches the room with his eyes before rising, listening to the sounds of the barracks, the occasional door slam or shut, someone closing a locker, the sounds of background silence, which is not.
Like often, he had the urine hard-on, which he carried secretly under his shorts down the hallway, lifting up his flip-flopped feet with care, so as not to scrape shuffle on the waxed floor, to the latrine and sinks.
Today, however was different than any day he had lived in the military. Today would be his last. If. If he yet got no bonus offer, which might change his mind, as his family still needed to pay off the house, pay off the truck, invest in his children’s college and his and Jessie’s retirement, which still seemed worlds away. The latrine door swung open with a whine of its hinges, and Karoly, known to everyone as PFC Wiezniezki, stepped in and took his place at a sink, setting his shaving kit down and pulling out tooth brush and paste while he nodded silently to Penn.

‘Last day, Mike?’
‘Yeh.’ Mike didn’t want to discuss his ambivalence. He was also thinking that his two kids would have their dad back, rather than have to face and experience his being sent back to Iraq or Afghanistan. To the war that so many in this country were not aware of, this thing having been packaged as a military action. Mike finished his hygiene in silence, going back to don the rest of his p.t. outfit and go check on two privates in his squad.
Meanwhile, at battalion headquarters, Lt. Col Galtieri strode in the double doors, as the staff sergeant on duty stood and called ‘Battalion! At-tenTION!’ He nodded, greeting with a quick ‘At ease. Good morning guys!’ Without pause he strode to his office, flicked on the light, and set his briefcase down behind his desk. Then off to formation he went, as the soldier on duty with the sergeant carried the engineer flag out to raise at precisely zero six hundred.

At 0600 the parking lots are already filling with the vehicles of soldiers coming in from the other side of post, from outside post in the communities where soldiers’ families have rented or even bought houses. No on wants to be late; some are even more than three quarters of an hour early. If you are a platoon sergeant, you might even be coming in an hour or more early to meet with the first sergeant and captain at a planning meeting, or to catch up on paperwork. Mike Penn has already been by the new barracks building, knocked on his soldiers’ doors to make sure they’re up, and to inspect their quarters. Heaven forbid the first sergeant finds them not squared away when the Sergeant Major makes his inspection.
The field is crunchy with the frost from the night before. When soldiers’ watches read about fifteen after, one or two leave the groups talking around their cars and pickups, and move out to an invisible line drawn across the field, a line established through days into weeks into months into years of assembly, where the first rank will line up, and the two ranks behind the first, ranks separated by spaces indicating separate companies. One or two senior sergeants will be behind the formation, and the three lieutenants, one for each company, and then the captain and the exxo—the executive officer.
It’s at this time, before p.t., that soldiers might trade talk about what went on the night before. And so the young black sergeants are laughing and talking about what went down at the club the night before, and who got sloshed, who made it back to the barracks with a ‘ho,’ and what the hapless room-mate might have done to either ignore the ensuing love-fest, or in some cases, even join in, as was legendary one night on the 700 block, when a train ensued which counted a couple of dozen soldiers having their turn with a woman who either had an unquenchable libido, was somewhat drunk or high, or both.
His squad leader, Sergeant Taggett, looked in askance at him,’Why you in p.t.’s man?’
Mike answered him, grinning, while keeping his place in line, arms behind himself in ‘at ease’ position. ‘I wanted to get the exercise.’
Physical training, or p.t. as they called it, and the subsequent shower and change left Mike feeling refreshed even if worked out. Breakfast was a guilty pleasure of a doughnut and coffee. This last day would be full, since he not only had to clear Out processing, but also had an eleventh-hour meeting with the Colonel before final formation, which could be any time from 16:30 till 17:30, depending on such factors as the cleanliness of the motor pool line, or the duration of the company staff meeting.

Come nine o’clock found our hero walking up the doors of the Marne welcome center to meet with the National Guard recruiters. Mike did not think that he wanted to join them, but the company commander had practically given him a standing order to do so, and besides, it was on his list to out-process. Still, he was thinking that the money might come in handy, that monthly check, but the Guard was likely to be activated to go to Iraq. Oh, so many decisions.

_in his mind is a constant run of memories:

It is a sunny bright day, dusty in the desert south of Baghdad, south of the Euphrates. Somewhere to the right is the Euphrates. Somewhere ahead, getting nearer and nearer we are, through the clouds of dust, awaits the armies of Saddam Hussein, the Republican Guard, and a people who, according to our reports, have been mercilessly oppressed, tortured, and exploited. But we are invading their land. How will they react?

I just missed Kenyon’s deadline. But I’m driving on.

This should become a short story on the struggle… I’m not saying more. ...but this entry can become a shory story.

Somehow you led them—
Bosnian Serbs who massacred
entire villages.

...
Thinking back in my memories of my life, of the days of striving when I was trying to make my mark, trying to get a job and do something lasting, something in which my life would make a difference for the better.
as a way of bringing Ben home.”
to the days when I contemplated going to Central America
to be part of the fight for justice.
When I was an activist for social justice,
socioeconomic awarenesss, reduction of nuclear
and conventional arms, ecological activism…
what did I accomplish? Not hardly anything, I fear.
But… was it in vain?

I'll be plumbing the depths of my memory back

It ain’t over till the phat lady sings.