War Stories #79

without cindy here day in and day out,
I don’t know     .      .     .      but without the program, I
sure as hell wouldn’t be around to share
these stories of courage without strength, these
forlorn tales of those caught under the bus,
run over in life’s sideway paths lost be-
tween the cracks     .     .     .      without this hope, without
wisdom shared and bullets bitten within
fellowship, how could I hope to arti-
culate these dramas faced and unfaced drunk
sober and drunk again, now sober to
remain, twelve steps out of hell and walking
hand-in-hand with the unlikely love of my life,
my once and forever partner, cindy.

David M Pitchford
27 Oct 2011            *final of this project to be posted

War Stories #47

maybe two weeks after donna’s funeral,
julie looked me up, dragged me from a meeting
to share some bad news. she had contracted
h.i.v. from somewhere, unsure whether
from a john or from a dirty needle.
either way, it was not to worry me,
as I had never shared her or her spikes.
but then she had to tell me that somehow
that gang from saint louis had gotten our
names and were on the hunt for all of us.
a banger I knew from meetings confirmed
this, and said I could buy my way free of it
for the right price . . . that’s what got me downstate,
and, by God, somehow it’s all for the good.

David M Pitchford
24 Oct 2011

War Stories #19

god knows what georgy was doing on top
of absinthe that night. all jacked up he got
it in his head that he was a turnip
or some such shit, and took a wire brush to
himself. billy told him a paring knife
might work better, and then we all watched dazed
and mortified while georgy started cutting
chunks out of his own torso with a dull
hunk of steel from the kitchen. back then,
roxanne, a trauma nurse, was hanging out
with us and helping find us fixes—she
clocked him with the absinthe bottle, strapped him
down and stitched him up with fishing line well
enough to keep us from repercussions.

David M Pitchford
23 Oct 2011

War Stories #17

where in the world is our place? billy asked
me once. folks like us, the ones run over
by life and this curious world, where do
we fit in? I recall shoving a mescal
bottle at him and telling him to drink
from the teat of earthen kindness, just to
shut him up. nothing like deep water to
kill a good buzz. but then, sometimes questions
like that—under the right influence, or
perhaps the wrong—they pull you in like some
addiction centered in the mind itself,
that’s a drug you can’t buy on any street.
hasn’t stopped me looking at any rate,
always this search for island of misfits . . .

David M Pitchford
22 Oct 2011

Campfire Party

late that night someone called the cops, twenty
grown adults ran for the wood just behind
the house, ten yards from the bonfire, and I
was the one left to answer to deputy
don about the noise—ozzie was on his
crazy train when the cruiser cruised up, but
bon jovi had been the impetus for
the call—and all I could say was kegger!

once it was all sorted out, we turned down
kelly’s car stereo and I collected
all the clutter, though we were tapping beer—
mick ultra—into actual glasses
to be green and responsible, just a score
of adults past the bar scene having fun.

David M Pitchford
21 Oct 2011

Daddy’s Girl

after the night, his fractured voice in grey
whispers crawls along her memory, cold
and misty like october morning. she
shudders in the crisp breeze—forty-nine this
morning, cold front having passed over some
time in the night—sunny but breezy, jacket
no slicker. she hears his voice in the tattered
wind, in its choppy gusts feels his old angers

later, after the visitation, she
sits with friends over coffee drinks and speaks
of her father, the bright days of her youth
when he had been bigger than life. never
the truth of his despotism, his heavy
hands roaming her flesh . . . his scotch stinking breath.

David M Pitchford
20 Oct 2011

Accountable

a man needs someone to know him, my shrink
tells me. in business, it’s sometimes who you
know, but in life it’s always a matter
of who knows you. there’s something hardwired there
that makes us crave, need even, that contact,
that contract if you will, of knowing and
being known—an accountability—
in a social sense whether or not in
a moral or ethical sense. a need
for continuity . . . without that link,
we flirt with the dissolution of per-
sonality, of personhood; and that
becomes the short track to insanity,
not the fun kind, but of the sociopath.

David M Pitchford
14 Oct 2011

Blue-eyed Girl from Nowhere

she always seemed to me an angel dropped
down the long arc of azure sky, fallen
as though too soon leaving the nest of heaven
to wing across the milky way. she stopped
short of gravity’s tragedy, and popped
from the clouds sans trumpet, sans harp, heathen
angel without message, scroll, or even
warnings of world’s demise, god’s wrath overtopped . . .

it was something in the way she moved, danced
really, some animal grace married to
coy innocence contrasted with a glance
wise and knowledgeable as the stars; to
say she was beautiful would to be to chance
understatement, and yet her virtue is true.

David M Pitchford
14 Oct 2011