The road

The road is where I find
my pictures, my moments
kept. The ones that speak
for me, to me. The ones
to share.

A concrete mammoth

in the tar pits on

Wilshire Boulevard.

The shell of a decrepit

gas station, the empty chair.

The January noon light 

on Sunset Boulevard,

the carcass of a Cadillac

in the carcass of a town.

A concrete brontosaurus

beside a desert highway

with a gift shop in its belly.

My mother once asked me,

why do you take so many

pictures of gas stations?

I told her, because that’s

where we stop.

Sometimes, the picture

is just the road itself;

vanishing, an arrow

pointing to infinity.

No money, no ID, no idea

 I dozed a bit on the afternoon train
from Ulm to Regensburg. 

Woke up just in time to scramble off

and watch the train leave the station.

And discovered that my wallet

had departed with it. With my money,

my Army ID, the phone numbers

and addresses of the new friends

I was going to visit for the first time

in a town I’d never been to.

All I knew was that it was somewhere outside

or near Regensburg, but the name of which

little town or village it was I couldn’t remember.

I should have paid more attention.

That’s what the scrap of paper with their phone

numbers and addresses was for. To call them.

I had a few coins, enough to call information.

But I only knew their first names: Dieter and Ralf.

Obviously not enough to get a number

from the operator, though she was kind.

I walked out of the city, hoping it was

in the right direction. Probably wasn’t.

The sun went down and I hadn’t reached

a town or village so I found a place to sleep

under a bridge over a small, cold stream.

When I woke up the next morning,

my eyes were crusty, sore, and swollen.

I dipped my handkerchief in the stream and rinsed

some of the burn out of my itching eyes.

Began the long hitchhike back to the base in Ulm.

The rides were short, infrequent, just village to village,

I wasn’t going to make it back that day.

The last one dropped me off near midnight

in the middle of a small city. The name

on the sign at the edge of town was Dachau.

No people on the tree-lined streets. No cars,

no open restaurants or bars. Just clouds

of moths fluttering under lone street lamps.

Not that I wanted to linger, I kept walking until I was

well outside of town into the black moonless countryside.

Looking for a place to curl up in my thrift store raincoat.

I walked out into a dark field. The ground was soft,

freshly plowed, but even in the dim light of our

milky galaxy, I could see pale white specks in the soil.

I told myself that surely those are not the cremated remains

of the people murdered at the concentration camp.

But it felt like they were. Like their icy breath

on the back of my neck. I shivered and turned

back towards the road, stumbled out of the field.

Walked until the night felt warm as a summer night

in June was supposed to be. I passed a rat the size

of a cocker spaniel walking along the shoulder of the road.

I kept on walking, beyond the icy breath of the dead.

I don’t remember much about the place I found

to rest that night. There were trees. And grass.

Critter

 Critter liked to watch me tripping.
If I had a tab of Orange Sunshine
or Purple Haze, he said drop it,
go ahead, I’ll hitchhike on your trip.

One midnight at the Art Co-op,

we were painting walls

and I saw the whole spectrum

in the industrial white

with every stroke.

At three a.m. we left

and started walking home.

On the overpass over 101,

we watched a three-car

accident unfold below.

Man! did you see that?

A big old Cadillac

stopped in the center lane

with fire shooting out

from under the hood.

A minute later a Valiant

plowed into the Caddy.

Then a Chevy swerved

to miss the Cadillac and

creamed the Valiant.

No one was hurt, thank God, 

but I think some of them

or all of them were drunk.

We stuck around to tell

the Highway Patrol

what we witnessed.

I was still tripping, I could taste

my words, but they were

basically coherent.

Despite Critter making faces

trying to make me laugh.

A couple weeks later,

he had some psilocybin,

gave me some but he

stayed straight.

We walked up into the hills

in a gentle rain, the moss

on the rocks glowed

softly green.

Critter plucked up a handful,

held it up for me to smell.

Says, what is it? 

Does it remind you

of a girl’s  bush?

One night we visited

some girls who were living

near San Francisco State.

They went to bed but once again,

I was tripping and he was straight.

He opened up the refrigerator,

said let’s watch this like TV.

Put his hand into half a roasted

butternut squash, and mashed it

between his fingers, laughing.

The dawn broke grey and cool.

We stared out the window

as neighborhood faded into light.

Left before the girls woke up.

The residue of my trip

was like metal in my mouth.

I went away later that year

to a missile unit in Germany.

My tripping days ended

on Christmas Eve that year,

when I did some heroin to mellow

out a holiday acid trip.

He wrote to me from Hawaii

that winter, said his girlfriend

and he were going into the

pearl import business

and I should get involved.

That never happened,

but when I finally came home,

I moved into a flat upstairs from them

on Polk Street and began my studies

at the art school.

Critter and Monkey persuaded me

that androgyny is how I should present,

like Lou or Mick or Bowie.

Dyed my hair blue, wore yellow

crushed velour hot pants

and hit the discos.

Until my camera was stolen

on Halloween night at the

Cabaret night club in North Beach.

I moved back home two days later.

Took the color out of my hair.

bought a cheap vintage

press camera, and began

to see streets and deserts

with my own eyes.

I never saw Critter again

after he and Monkey split up,

but I danced with her many times

after my classes at the Art Institute.

She worked in an antique store

at the Cannery.

When a customer left,

she’d say Close the door!

Turn up the radio! 

I loved her, sweet Jessica, -Monkey.

I was never queer enough for Critter.

Or tall enough for her, but we closed

the door of the shop and danced

between the antique tables and vanities.

Courtesy Patrol

I’ve been doing courtesy patrol

since I applied for conscientious

objector status last summer.

They had to find something

for me to do that didn’t involve

the missiles or any other

types of weapons.

So instead of a rotating duty roster

with a different driver every night,

I have the job every other night.

Works for me while I await

a decision on a discharge

for conscientious objection.

Works for Sergeant Carpenter,

cuts his duty roster in half.

In the afternoon I go get a jeep

checked out from the motor pool.

Take it over to the MP office

at nineteen hundred hours.

Pick up an NCO or an officer and

drive into the medieval city of Ulm,

birthplace of Albert Einstein,

site of the Munster, the tallest

Gothic cathedral in the world.

We’re supposed to cruise around

the town, make sure no personnel

are getting into trouble or need help

with anything. Courtesy patrol, right?

Bar fights, public drunkenness,

that sort of thing. Not once

in all four months I’ve been

doing this, have we needed

to do anything like that.

And if we actually did see

something happening, we have no

actual powers, if we find a problem

we’re supposed to call the military police

and let them deal with it.

I like driving around the old city at night.

Look at the Munster cathedral,

the 13th century houses.

Albert Einstein’s childhood home.

But one circuit around the city is all

the nightly duty officers ever want to do.

They might have this duty once a year

and what they want to do is go over

to Schillerstrasse behind the train station.

Park the jeep where they can watch

the prostitutes who wait in their cars

for customers. You can’t see

anything going on in the cars,

they drive into the back of a dark

parking lot or take their tricks

to a hotel or their personal rented rooms.

But I guess it’s some kind of thrill

for the watchers, imagining and

commenting on what is happening

in those cars. Two minutes, ha ha, ha

So this night was the usual,

I pick up a sergeant, one that

I actually know, and a lieutenant,

make a quick drive around town

then head for Schillerstrasse.

It’s a week before Christmas, cold.

Damp pavement glistens under

the few streetlights.The breath

of pedestrians look like steam.

Fortunately the heater in the jeep

I got this afternoon is semi- functional.

Because the canvas top and doors on a jeep

don’t do shit to keep out much cold.

So we park across the street, up a little ways

from where the prostitutes wait in their cars.

Not much action tonight. Maybe it’s the weather.

The window on a sporty Opel coupe across the street

rolls down and a slender hand beckons towards us.

It’s Rita, my friend of a few months since

I started doing this Courtesy Patrol.

I tell the Sarge, I’ll be right back and quickly leave

the jeep before he has a chance to say anything.

Rita is smiling, says Good Evening, Mark.

She says Frohe Weihnachten,

Merry Christmas, I have something for you.

She reaches under her seat and hands

me a small green cardboard box.

Home made, please enjoy them.

Danke schön! I have a present for you,

shall I bring it tomorrow night? Are you working?

She says, Sure, tomorrow, I’ll finish by eight, okay?

I hope it’s my favorite Scotch?

Of course it is, only the best for you, schatzi.

When I get back to the jeep.

Sarge says, What the hell is that!

The lieutenant says, Who the fuck is she? A whore?

I open the box, Christmas cookies, want one?