Shall we be cogs for purposes beyond our comprehension;
gods in a battle for their resurrection from oblivion;
or a bunch of dreaming clowns in a world of illusion?

Copyright © 2009, Charles N. Guthrie

The Purpose of Life and “jotters”
Wrote this in my late 20s, attending San Diego State
College, the greatest college in the world. No, I mean it. It’s
the greatest college in the world. Pulled over to the side of a
freeway (a somewhat dangerous jot down) and tossed it in
the box. (That box that all poets keep)

There are lots of us, “jotters,” I call them, people who
jot down their thoughts here and there before they forget
their thoughts. They are not necessarily writers. They could
be barbers, scientists, dish washers, or even students. You
see someone writing up against a building or atop a trash can
and you leave them alone. But you think, “Yeah, there is
somebody like me, a jotter.”

I wonder if John Keats was a “jotter,” or Emily. I
know Emily tossed a lot of lines into that chest she kept
under her bed. I call her by her first name because I feel
close to her. I keep a book of her poems beside my bed.

Maybe people I see writing things down are making
out grocery lists, or laundry lists and not writing poetry at all.
Well, you don’t know unless you ask, and it’s not the type of
thing into which one intrudes unless one knows the person.

There could have been a great battle/ or unforeseen
cataclysm in which intelligent life lost/ was dethroned by
indifference and all but the seeds of life were in an explosion
microscopically spattered all over the universe.

We could be insignificant stair steps on which the
gods will step to get to where ever gods travel. We could be
the last seed of the gods trying to put a once great intelligent
heaven back together. Or, what the heck, we could just be a
bunch of monkeys cackling in the trees about illusions and
dreams, writing our thoughts on little sheets of papers with
little notes and then tossing them into a box.

Oh, Jewish girls, Oh, Jewish girls, I love them;
but I’ll never get to heaven for what they’ve done.
Oh, Jewish girls, Oh, Jewish girls, I love them;
but I’ll never get to heaven for what they’ve done.

You see my heart strings are playing music for the devil;
my strings are on the devil’s fiddle he plays in hell.
The devil plays tortured music for the sinners on his fiddle
as they dance amongst’ the fires, the screams and yells.

Jewish girls anaesthetize the goy boys with their kiss
then pull the goy boy’s heart strings from their chests.
They deposit the strings in a New York Bank account
then sell them to the red horned devil at a discount.

When the goy boy gets up his chest feels empty.
He doesn’t know his heart strings are in hell.
He hears a strange music that sounds familiar
that comes from underneath the floor.

Read the entire poem

As we whisked him off to jail,
I looked through the rear view mirror,
while my partner told him he was evil.

“It’s liquor!
That turns you into a devil!”

She teased him,… and gave me a smile.
But, I told her,

“Your just going to get him riled.”

Then he shouted and ranted with rage,
while his eyes bulged with a glaze.

“You think you’re gods,
“But, without bullets you’re duds.”

He would talk, then he would babble,
but all the while he cursed and spit
at the back of my partners seat.

Happy tourists in the Grant Hotel
unaware of the commotion in our car
looked over their finger bowls
and through the windows at our moving blur.
On Broadway’s wet dark streets
the steam shot through each manhole cover
with a hiss then hung in pockets.

Again, the drunk began to rant and rave,

“You think you are gods,” he exclaimed,
“But, where are your followers?
….. Where are your disciples?
Without guns and bullets you are worthless.
Your disciples sleep in your revolver chamber.
They worship you in closed eyed prayer.”

The old drunk’s words were full of crazy logic
but they were also idiotic –

In his babble they just popped out
like a sudden picture out of TV static.
He continued on the same theme.

“A circumstance inside your mortal eye,
will select their beginning and their end,
Let them out to crash fast upon life’s rode
and die, never to know who or what they are.”

The old drunk was on his way to jail.
His voice was full of alcohol and ale.
So when he talked about god and bullets
I didn’t give a piss.
As we splashed through the ghost clouds on patrol,
I chewed the old drunk’s words inside my soul.
Sometimes, I thought,
my job was like driving heaven’s bullet
through the lowest clouds on earth.
Perhaps the words were an omen in the night
of unthinkable things to come about.
But the thought was forgotten.
There were arrest reports to be written.
The drunk was booked and jail door slammed shut.
Once again, our patrol car had an empty stomach.
We drove to “Johnny’s” Restaurant”.
I began to write the old man’s arrest report.
Our ears were tuned to Station “A”
while we sipped our coffee and wrote our 153.
When the dead air broke alive
we listened to its cracks and sighs.
Then my partner and I raised our eyes
when our squad car was assigned,

“…. a man under a house with
a Bible and a gun!”

At the destination we arrived and found a prowler
who’d climbed beneath a woman’s floor.
She heard noises in the night.
She drew her skirt about her waist so tight.
Her teary face was quite distraught.
She claimed there is a prowler beneath her
wooden floor– She could hear him making prayer.
He was seen by a neighbor,
with a Bible, and a gun!

 Should we try to coax him out,
or just leave him alone?
Upon our stomachs we begin to crawl
through a hole in the cellar wall.
We break cobwebs,
….. chase spiders
through the underbelly of the house
and make our way to where,…
A face looks back with beads of sweat
that sparkle in the dark and dust;
in a dim glow of flash light
he clutches his Bible and trigger tight
to ask,

“From where have you come?”
“From above the wooden ceiling.”

We reply.

He whispers to us, 

“God does not hear my prayers.
I pray soft to the god above.
I hear steps of thunder
above my head and shoulder.
My prayers do not go through the wooden floor.
I think I should pray louder!
I should shoot my gun through the wooden
ceiling to get god’s attention.
But, I just mostly listen”

We whisper back at him,

“We have come from above the wooden ceiling
The god that lives up there
doesn’t want you under her floor.”

He gives us a strange look and whispers back,

“God doesn’t want my prayer.
Doesn’t want me here anymore.
Doesn’t want my prayers beneath this floor.”

We tell him,

“Your praying makes god nervous,”

His head shakes.
He looks at his gun and then back at us.

“God doesn’t want you to fire your gun
into the wooden sky.
You have gotten god’s attention.
God wants you to go away–
or you could die!”

Suddenly above the floor
foot steps came near.
They gave the man a start
and he dropped his gun in the dirt.
Then grabbed,… at his gun in the dim light
while the shadows went breaking and jumping in the dark
as if to point the gun at us–
or just to pick the gun up from the dust!

In a fraction of an instant
Six hard faced sailors were let loose.
Lightening struck beneath the house.
Gone, all gone their lives spent
so quick and fast.
Only for a moment their lives last.
Beneath the house a man lay dead.
From beneath the wooden floor we retired.
Shaking we walked up to the lady’s door
and simply said,

“He will not bother you anymore.”

Now I sit silent and await the Coroner.
My partner empties shells from our guns
and replaces each spent cartridge
with a fresh unspent bullet that
…. sits ready to explode!
Empty cartridges are tossed into a poke.

There is an emptiness in and out.
We need to be told we were right.
Yet, we wait, listen to dead air static and think.
Could we be the ammunition in a target practice
for the gods in preparation for some cataclysmic fracas?

Or, perhaps something less.
Helpless bullets in the rifle of a drunk and reckless god
who, swaggers in his backyard
and shoots at the stars and moon
…. beyond his comprehension!

Listen to Station “A”
slowly winding out her song
She is picking and choosing partners in the sky
and winding hearts and muscle into destiny.
She deals a hand of cards to each,
a game of poker in the night;
where the ante is a patrolman’s fate
and winning hand a life.

Station “A” draw tight
your strings about my partners in the night.
I await your next call to be directed where to go.
I travel where I am told!

Yet, while toward the mark I travel, I wonder
about being bold,….
and how much influence I have over
when and how I shall explode!

The end

 

Copyright © 2009, by Charles N. Guthrie

This was written in 1969. I was 26 years old. Written during the period I worked on a special police unit called “21-X” which only responded to domestic, and neighborhood disputes. My partners in the Southern California police department I worked for were Lee Curtis, and Randy Swanson. We handled 21 years of domestic disputes in about two years. Good guys, both of them. This poem is 40 years old, has ridden around in the back of cars, stored in lockers, under beds, in closets, and computers; has survived marriages and girl friends, even a car wreck and it’s a good feeling to let it loose. It’s not a real story, but we did have to talk a man with a bible out from under his house.
When I wrote the poem my thoughts were about police enforcing a divine morality on earth, angels with guns. At some point on earth morality is enforced by someone with deadly force. Like the bullet shot at the target, once assigned a radio call we had little choice but to arrive and handle the situation. The idea that there is something watching over all of us, aiming us towards a divine ending and we’re all part of the divine scheme is contrasted with the idea that a drunk god could be shooting us like bullets at the moon for no apparent reason. A bullet hurtling toward a target trying to make sense out of its life, trying to have some control over its direction and understanding of its purpose before it explodes seemed analogous to what we were doing for a living. In the real sense, not just police but everyone is that bullet.

The spirits of the Romans and Ghengis Khan

all now sleep beneath a parchment of mud;

all fallen, submerged and forgotten.

Our souls in time will be drowned

into the canvas on which we stand.

But this mud is special mud,

the mud beside the road to Stalingrad.

This is not ordinary mud.

This mud gave the allies time to think,

to plan, and slowed the blitzkrieg in its track.

This mud contains the bone and blood

of the daughters and sons of Stalingrad.

Who with rifles, bloody fists and rocks

brushed a masterpiece of free will and defiance

using up the colors of their life to stand like Atlas.

Their spirit smote awe struck the Nazi army,

and brought halt to tanks and soldiers of the enemy.

Do not look puzzled when unnoticed

I remove mud from beside the road to Stalingrad

to cradle through Berlin across an ocean;

to take the mud to the other side of the world;

to place the dirt in a flower pot in Rhode Island,

where I’ll grow forget-me-nots that echo a bouquet

of gunshots from a battle far away.        

I suppose in time soldiers and scribblers

along with guns and words all drowned

into the canvas on which they stand.

Their romantic words about flowers

and memories all covered by mud’s parchment.

But the sons and daughters of Stalingrad

brushed with their lives the world.

 

Copyright © 2009, by Charles N. Guthrie

Tricky Dick slammed his fist

down on his oval desk;

then, with a frown yelled,

 “ The war in Viet Nam be damned!”

He thought John Dean was to blame

for signs outside that ridiculed his name;

but it was the ghost of Judy Mae Hess,

from 20 years ago;

who died an Indian Princess

on a TV puppet show

who brought the protest.

. . . .

Once upon a childhood long ago,

along with millions of other little boys

I was in love with an Indian Princess

on a TV puppet show.

The princess’ name was Summerfall Winterspring.

When she looked  through the TV screen

her voice talked about being good and true

as if she was talking just to you.

Then one fall day, in 1953,

the Indian Princess Summerfall Winterspring,

Buffalo Bob, a character on the show explained,

had gone to the “Happy Hunting Ground.”

Fantasy came tumbling down.

Mothers in their kitchens fixing dinners

saw little children pointing fingers at TV sets,

asking with angry, crying faces,

“Who behind the screen made the decisions?

Answer-less parents called TV stations.

That night a million little boys cried to dreams.

. . . .

Some of us, years later in the library stacks;

found her again in old magazines.

The Indian Princess from the TV set,

the one that took my heart with all the rest

at last had a name like everyone else.

Her real name was Judy Mae Hess.

The article said, “She had been fired.”

Her departure was finally explained.

She went on to star in the movie

Jailhouse Rock with Elvis Presley.

Her career was having great success

under her real name Judy Mae Hess.

But her real name was lost to little fans

who were forgotten in the TV lands.

In the middle of her success, Judy Mae Hess,

love of my life and everyone else;

died in a car crash in Rock River, Wyoming.

The obituary failed to mention her absence

going unexplained from a puppet show in 1953,

was the most romantic event of the Twentieth Century.

But, back then who could have predicted or known

the absence of a princess on a puppet show

would begin in the minds of children

a skeptical explosion ?

. . . .

Two decades had passed and the puppets

Bluster and Flub-a-dub were left in closets.

Judy Mae Hess was in a mausoleum.

Tricky Dick was fighting the war in Viet Nam

and trying to deal with war protestors at home.

He wondered from where the angry young men came.

Dick thought it was John Dean he had to blame.

He looked out and over the Rose Garden Gate

at the signs and pickets that ridiculed his name

and wondered again from where they came.

Alas, he didn’t see the ghost of Judy Mae Hess

who died in a puppet show an Indian Princess.

 

Copyright  ©  2009 Charles N. Guthrie

Charles N. Guthrie lives and writes in Southern California.

In November 1953, Judy Tyler, (maiden name, Judy Mae Hess) was fired from the “Howdy Doody Show,” a TV puppet show.  She played the role of an Indian Princess called Summerfall Winterspring.  When she was taken off the show an uproar came from her young audience and their parents.  Her disappearance from the show was never explained to millions of young viewers.  On July 4, 1957, Judy Tyler, and her husband Gregory Lafayette, were killed in an automobile accident in Rock River, Wyoming.   At the time of the publication of this poem the memory of Judy Mae Hess haunts a romantic generation of men in their mid 60s. If you will the first TV children.  The long term effect of her unexplained removal from the “Howdy Doody Show,” and the skepticism and broken hearts it produced influenced American politics and history.  My apologies for having some fun with President Nixon’s name.  He is my favorite president.  History will treat Nixon as one of our greatest presidents who put country over everything.  The Hamletian issues he faced and how he resolved them will eventually make him more popular in history than his own time.