Friendly Fire

Ted Pelton
From Endorsed by Jack Chapeau, Starcherone Books, Starcherone Books, 2000

Many societies respond to threats to their way of life by creating a powerful apocalyptic dream of a future time when enemies will be overthrown and the world returned to a divine order established in the beginning, from which we can all derive hope and strength.

                                                                                Andrew Wiget, "Ghost Dance Songs"

                                                                                The Heath Anthology of American Literature

As kids we all read Dr. Seuss. 

            We saw the tube and ate the quiche and got the results of Friday’s poll.  The tubular poll of what we thought and ate the burger and gave it up. 

            We saw the tube on Tuesday night and ate the stew and gave it up.  We gave it up on Saturday night and ate the beer and drank the tube. 

            In drinking tubes one pours some beers in an upright tube which feeds into another's mouth.  He lies on his back and opens his mouth and drinks the beers.  That's drinking tubes on Saturday night.  And got the poll and saw the war on CNN sent out for wings and ate the wings and gave it up.

            We gave it up on Wednesday night to see the poll and isn’t it clear my dear emir?  A friendly fire we sat around warmed us.  A friendly fire flashed on our faces and warmed us.

            A friendly fire will warm us.

            A friendly fire will harm us.

            A friendly fire will warm us and harm us.

My Dad’s Roy Rockwood.  That’s not his real name of course.  He wrote Bomba the Jungle Boy at the Giant Cataract.

            Staff sergeant!  Who is this man?  It’s just my good friend Toucan Sam.  You remember our Fruit Loops pal.  Now with an advanced weapon system in every specially marked box.  A breakfast window of opportunity.  It’s just my good friend Toucan Sam.  Just open his beak and blam blam blam!

            My Dad’s Roy Rockwood and I’m cleaning my oven.  We baked pearls made of denture material in this blueberry pie.  I’m Dan Rather I’ll see you tomorrow night.  I’m Dan Rather I’ll see you tomorrow night.

            A friendly fire will warm us warm us.

            Where is Mars?  It’s in the stars.  Where is Mars but in the stars.  In the stars I see Mars.  Mars for American stars and bars.  Mars with American stars and bars my dear emir.  My dear emir here’s what I fear.  Isn’t it clear?  My Kuwaiti emir if isn’t it clear what thing I fear you needn’t worry or consult the stars or look to Mars.  Mars with American stars and bars.

            Did you hear the one I heard today?  American boys got porn to fly.  Got porn to fly and took to the sky.  I heard today American boys got porn to fly.  They saw the porn and took to the sky.  I heard this from my good friend Robin.

            As kids we all read Dr. Suess.  We saw the tube and ate the quiche and got the results of Friday’s poll.  The tubular poll of what we thought and ate the burger and gave it up.  We saw the tube on Tuesday night and ate the stew and gave it up.  We gave it up on Saturday night and ate the beer and drank the tube.  Sent out for wings and watched the war.  We gave it up on Wednesday night to see the poll and isn’t it clear my dear emir?  A friendly fire we sat around warmed us.  A friendly fire flashed on our faces and warmed us.

            My Dad’s Roy Rockwood.  We last saw Bomba in the pit of vipers.  We feared for Bomba among the vipers but along came the snipers and he was okay.  We sure were glad.  I’m cleaning my oven with denture material baked in tubular blueberry pie.

            How often do you soften? 

            Soften often?  Then use what I use.  With bluing for extra whiteness.  Get it up and hit em hard.  Then back to Bomba in an airplane hangar threatened by thugs looking for the map to the secret cache of buried jewels.  Back to those thrilling days of yesteryear.  Back to the future.  Back back back to the tarpits.  Back    back    back    back. 

Return with us now back to those thrilling days of yesteryear . . . the lone ranger rides again!

            When we last saw the masked avenger and his faithful sidekick Tonto they had just discovered the fiendish plan of the Clancy brothers to rob the noon stage heading into Dry Gulch.  Ned Clancy, the boys grizzled ne'erdowell uncle, confessed their sinister plot in a cave miles from town. 

            You'll never make that stage in time cackled Ned Clancy. 

            Indeed mere minutes remained before the stage reached Dry Gulch. 

            You stay here Tonto and wait for the proper authorities.  I'll have to hurry if I'm to catch that stage on time. 

            The Lone Ranger departs with the microphone and in years to come a team of cameramen.

            Hmmm Kemosabe leave take microphone.  No get say now.  Uhhh me left guard prisoner feed horses.  No fun Tonto.  Me want be hero but no get be hero.  Hmmm.  Crow land on branch nearby.  Crow you like Tonto.  No say word no have microphone.  Tonto able speak but no got grammar.  Maybe get grammar get microphone.  Uhhh Tonto no think too hard guard prisoner feed horses.  Maybe Tonto make clever knot use next episode.  Practice track animals.  Crow let Tonto see sizum foot.  Crow standum still.  Why crow fly away.  Uhhh crow return but out Tonto's reach.  Crow hard bird track no let Tonto see sizum foot.  Clancy now sleep.  He have no more scene in show.  Tonto one more scene at end but no more lines.  Tonto give silent look full of meaning at end when Kemosabe go on bout America.  Clancy you lucky.  You sleep.  Tonto have to wait give meaningful stare at end listen propaganda.  Where crow now?  Hey!  Who you?  Why you wearum sacred dress?  What you mean buffalo return?  Ha.  Crow no speak.  No foolum Tonto.  This trick of white man producer makum fun Tonto.  Where white man producer?  Tonto no fooled.  Tonto no barbershop injun.  Why try trickum Tonto?  What Tonto do?  Where producer?  No foolum Tonto crow-man.  Buffalo dead.  Makum way for soundstage propaganda.  Where sound technician?  Sound technician always try fool Tonto.  Sound man no like Tonto.  Tonto don't get money so much.  Why sound man not like Tonto?  Be quiet crow-man.  Buffalo no return.  Tonto got good job no reservation injun.  White man puppet make three square.  No got time dance.  Dance no good.  No dance good no more.  Buffalo dead.  Crow-man leave Tonto be.  Why Tonto brain taunt Tonto.  Tonto want live good life be good injun.  Tonto give up on crazy dream of past.  Tonto no like life now but it okay.  Tonto no want dream.  Tonto no want dream no.

He wanted her badly.  If I don’t have her he thought to himself I will regret it the rest of my life.  Just like that he thought it to himself and then regarded the sentence with wonder.  If I don’t have her I will regret it the rest of my life.  If I don’t have her I will regret it the rest of my life.

            He wanted her badly.  He wanted her so badly that he pictured her.  He could see her.  He could see how she looked.  He could see how she felt to his fingers as they slid down her bare torso.  He could see how she felt as he turned her onto her stomach in bed then raised her hipbones.  He could see how she looked as he mounted her front raised stiffly on his arms.  He wanted her badly his mouth moving to between her legs.  To kiss her stomach to bite her nipples her neck her throat her ear her neck as he entered her she gasped.  As he entered her he worked slowly his hands over her body as he entered her worked slowly lifting her into the air from impossible positions as he entered her worked slowly.  As he entered her he could see how she looked and felt and tasted as he moistened her he worked slowly.  As he entered her he could see how he would enter her again and again and each time he wanted different.  As he entered her again he wanted it different every single time she gasped his hands over her bare torso.  Or holding her legs as the ankles came around his back as the ankles came to his neck.  Or as she straddled him like a horse he saw her.  Or as she held him close like lovers he saw how he felt her.  Or as he entered her he saw how he heard her gasp.  Or as he worked slowly he saw her soften into something pliable which had to have him which wanted him which gasped which was moistened on which he worked slowly.  He wanted her so badly that he pictured her.  He could see her slowly slowly.  It was an image in his mind at half speed.

            Like any American hetero male he was familiar with the image of a perfect women’s body.  Like any American hetero male he had seen many perfect women’s bodies.  Like any American male he had seen more perfect ones than not perfect.  Like any American hetero male perfect women had handed him beers.  Like any American hetero male he had had women hand him beers sleek brown bottles in slender fingers and red nails.  Like every American hetero male he had seen more perfect ones than not perfect handing him beers with the slender fingers and waists.  They handed him beers in bikinis.  In bikinis they outnumbered him and all of them were perfect.  These perfect women’s breasts were enormous.  Their bodies were like slender reeds bearing grapefruit impossibly perfect.  What perfect bodies they had.  Their impossibly perfect bodies he had seen them again and again.  (Like any American hetero male at times his lover’s body had seemed perfect.  At times his lover’s body seemed perfect but never to his lover who would point out how her body wasn’t perfect.)  Like any American hetero male he wished he could rid himself of the image of a woman’s perfect body.  Like any American hetero male he found it impossible not to desire it and desire to be rid of it.  Like any American hetero male he wished he was rid of it and yet saw them again and again and tried to turn away in disgust.  Like any American hetero male he tried to turn away in disgust he couldn’t because they were already an image in his mind.  Like any American hetero male he was sure to see the image again and again because he was particularly targeted.  Like any American hetero male he was an object.  Like any American hetero male he could succeed again and again to turn away from the image of a perfect woman’s body but one day he would succumb.  Like any American hetero male he was begged to succumb every day and more than once a day.  Like any American hetero male he wanted his cock sucked.  Like any American hetero male he was offered perfect women to hand him beers and suck his cock every single day every single day.  Like every American hetero male he was particularly targeted because it wasn’t particularly difficult to target every single American hetero male. 

            It's true that boys got porn to fly got porn to fly and hit the sky. 

            The showed boys porn to get them up

            To get them up to hit 'em hard.

            To hit the enemy with all they had.

            To hit 'em hard the enemy hard.

            Hard for American stars and bars.

Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye.  Much sense the starkest madness.  'Tis the majority in this as in all which prevails.  Assent and you are sane.  Demur and you’re straightway dangerous and handled with a chain.

            Much madness is divinest sense.  The surgical nonetheless explodes.  No other reply is acceptable.  The tape undergoes editing before broadcast time.

            I was in Louisville Kentucky the day George Bush gave Iraq until sundown of a certain future day to get out of Kuwait.  I was asked on the street by a man with a microphone and a cameraman.  I had driven down that day from North of Cincinnati where my sister-in-law lives and had heard the news over the car radio all the way down.  We would be going to war in all likelihood.  I told the man that I thought we were making a grave mistake.  I told the man that I thought President Bush’s rhetoric was straight out of a Western.  Was it sundown in Washington in Greenwich in Bagdad in Jerusalem?  No it was a symbolic sundown only in language.  It was to shame the leader of Iraq before the world.  It was two schoolboys out on the playground.  Whaddya mean?  Oh yeah?  Says who?  You and what army?  It was John Wayne.  It was Gary Cooper.  It was the president reacting to people who said he wasn’t tough enough.  Oh yeah?  Says who?  Whaddya mean?  You and what army?  I had driven down to Louisville to give a paper on Gertrude Stein.  I had to deliver the paper the next day but I wanted to get to the University as soon as I could in order to hear one of the afternoon sessions.  I was already late and had missed the papers given that morning.  I had now just checked into my hotel and I saw the man with the microphone and the other with the camera.  I walked over.  I wanted to say something.  I wanted to get to the conference but this was more important.  We would be going to war in all likelihood.  I wanted to have a statement in the public record.  But I forgot.  The tape undergoes editing before broadcast time. 

            I did some research several years ago for a professor writing a cultural history of the 1940s.  Among the things I turned up that later found their way into his book were pictures and descriptions of the phenomenon known as the TV Party.  When television began not many people could immediately afford the novel new devices which few expected would one day dominate their lives.  A single television in a neighborhood could become a magnet.  One image in a forties magazine showed an assembled group of perhaps twenty people watching a screen perhaps ten inches wide.  A TV Party!  This the post-war America which the development of television awaited.  Introduced at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939, the technological infrastructure needed for broadcasting could not be put into operation until the war effort was no longer needed.  American author and modernist Gertrude Stein dead in Paris in 1946 just missed seeing the thing that probably would be the most influential cultural instrument of the next half century in her native land.

            When the Persian Gulf War began I was living in Buffalo, New York, and Nicolette and I were the only people in our circle of friends with cable TV to pull in CNN which quickly defined itself as the channel on which to watch the war.  Our phone hardly stopped ringing and soon we had a roomful of people watching the war.  A TV Party!  The dimensions had gotten a little bit better over the years.  We had about twelve people all of whom disapproved of our nation’s involvement in the war watching a screen of about twenty inches.  But the next few days began our introduction to a new type of math.  A poll soon demonstrated scientifically that 91% of the nation favored the steps taken by the president in our behalf.  I began to realize what a statistical aberration myself and my friends were.  In order to correct the twelve people in my and my wife’s apartment given the 91% figure there must somewhere be assembled a crowd of 133 people who all approved of the war.  What were the statistical chances that in a nation where only nine people of every hundred held a certain position twelve people assembled in a room would all be of this tiny minority?  And that was only the beginning of the new math.  A week later I went to a demonstration at Lafayette Square in downtown Buffalo.  There were about 80 people there protesting American involvement in the Persian Gulf War.  It was ten degrees out that day it being January in Buffalo but even so in order to subsume us within the poll’s figure one would need an assembled crowd of 880 people all of whom supported the war.  In January a few days before the Super Bowl there was a massive demonstration in Washington DC where it was estimated 20,000 people showed their disgust with American policy in the war.  I wasn’t there but I have a videotape of the event I will be glad to show to anyone who asks me.  Let's say for argument's sake that the number was exaggerated.  Let's say only 10,000 were there, 10,000 people who belonged to the 9%.  The failure of a crowd of 110,000 people approximately .05% of the nation’s population to ever assemble to physically controvert the evidence of such a demonstration and prove the polls correct convinces me that the polls are in error and that people who believe them willingly swallow a lie. 

            One might say that people have lost their natural habits of living.

            Usually I resist the idea when I hear such because it sounds too much like Chicken Little’s The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

            I usually resist the idea when I hear such a thing but now I agree one might say people have lost their natural habits of living.  Think of the fireplace.  People don’t sit and watch fires in the fireplace as they probably used to.  Not only do people no longer sit and watch fires in the fireplace like they probably used to but people my age and I’m not that young don’t know of a time when television didn’t perform that function.  People my age and I’m not that young had televisions for fireplaces.

            I agree one might say people have lost their natural habits of living.

            I visited a restored house a couple weeks ago.  It was restored to how it would have looked in 1860.  Aside from styles it probably would have organized itself much the same in 1940.  In 1860 or 1940 while I can only say probably about the past people looked at each other or looked at the fire.  In 1940 people probably would have listened to the radio Bomba the Jungle Boy escaping from the Mad Arabs but the radio probably didn’t replace the fire or other people.  I agree one might say people have lost their natural habits of living.

            I was standing in the living room when I was told the house had been restored.  It organized itself differently.  What was different?  There was no television.

            I’m not that young and I have trouble imagining a living room without a television.  It seems to me while I can only say probably about the past life was probably different in the days of the fireplace or even of the radio.  What was different?  There was no television.

            I don’t want to sound like Chicken Little and I know I have to say probably about the past but unanimity makes me nervous.  I have to agree people have probably lost their natural habits of living and I say that because unanimity makes me nervous.

            The wars Americans prepared for in 1860 and 1940 must have been different although I can only say probably about the past.  That unanimity I can only say probably wouldn’t have made me as nervous.

            Scared or perhaps angry anticipating but not the feeling of queasiness at the knowledge of a widespread lie.  Unanimity the result I have to agree people have lost their natural habits of living probably.

            Everybody during the most recent war different from 1860 or 1940 when people probably looked at each other or fires was saying the same thing.  Not just the same ideas but the same words.

            Saddam Hussein is another Hitler.

            Don’t you support the troops?

            I was on the phone with my mother and told her I was against the war.  She told me she didn’t like the idea but supported the troops.  My father heard from my mother’s response that we were talking about the war because he got on and said Saddam Hussein is another Hitler.

            I told my brother although I’ll give him credit this was in the early days and he later had more complex opinions.  I told him I was against the war and he said Do you support the troops? 

            SUPPORT and TROOPS kept turning up in the same sentence. 

            Don't you SUPPORT the TROOPS?  I SUPPORT the TROOPS. We should all get behind the TROOPS and show our SUPPORT.  Channel eight will be sponsoring a SUPPORT the TROOPS dinner tomorrow evening at the Civic Center.  Come on out and remember SUPPORT the TROOPS.  That SADDAM HUSSEIN is another HITLER. 

            My father-in-law is Hungarian and he left Europe during World War II.  Someone told him Saddam Hussein is another Hitler.  Do you have any idea who Hitler was he asked the man.  ANOTHER and HITLER kept turning up in the same sentence as SADDAM HUSSEIN.

            At the protest at Lafayette Square in Buffalo there was a small counter-demonstration with people shouting We support the troops and carrying signs that said SUPPORT THE TROOPS. 

            My father and mother lived five hours away in New York’s Catskill Mountains.  My brother lived further South in New York City.  My father-in-law was told about SADDAM HUSSEIN and HITLER by a man living in his home city on the other side of the country Boise Idaho.  On the news I saw a demonstration of people supporting the troops in Newport News Virginia.  A friend of mine expressed disbelief that SADDAM HUSSEIN was being compared to HITLER.  He was calling me on the phone from Houston Texas.  How were we all over the country using the same words in our different sentences?  We were all hearing people saying SUPPORT TROOPS SADDAM HUSSEIN ANOTHER HITLER.  How else but television?

            And there were yellow ribbons.

Where did the yellow ribbons come from?  They seemed to simply arrive one day, tautly strung from the tops of lamp posts down Main Street, tagging street signs, recalling the pop song of years ago where the boy comes home from the war to discover everyone has been thinking about him, has put their lives on hold until his return.  But where did they come from?  They were impossible to miss.  Every public space belonged to them.  And civic buildings -- the town hall, the police department, the courthouse, forget about it -- tied up and down with ribbons, oodles of them, like spaghetti kids have thrown all over the refrigerator, the game to see if its done.  But the ribbons didn't stop there.  One almost expected, standing too long on the corner waiting for the light to change, to be strung up with ribbons, to be tied to the stake with ribbons, the fire licking up at your heels, the ribbons browning, melting rather than burning, another taken into the conflagration.  Where did they come from?  They were everywhere, but I myself never saw a single one put up, the way one sometimes actually sees crews spraying double yellow lines on the road or climbing scaffolding to hang a banner for the Grand Opening of something or other.  The ribbons entered our public spaces and then it was hard for people to remember when they hadn't been there, so that it was a surprise to me when, after the war was officially over and the bright yellow of past days had become the color of an old teeshirt, it surprised me, walking down the street with my friend David, when he said, Can we take the ribbons down now?

            By that time it actually had become a problem.  No one seemed to know when the proper time to take down the ribbons would come, or who should be responsible.  Would taking down a ribbon signify that the person taking it down didn't believe in what the ribbon had originally stood for?  No one was so brave to test it in daylight.  Was it unpatriotic to admit that life went on after a patriotic effort, or that patriotism simply demanded too much effort to continue on day after day?  And who had put the ribbons up in the first place?  Now they were starting to become eyesores.  Rains came and the ribbons streaked red with rust or grey with street soot or the dissolving bark of trees.  Boys played games, leaping for the frayed end of a ribbon tied much too high for them to reach, hardly tied at all anymore, but raggedly falling from above.  Of course, they never leaped for ribbons they could reach.  You knew you weren't actually supposed to touch them.  Someone might see you, and then how would you explain that? 

            But then you saw one as you were walking along the road well after the events that had put them up.  It was unrecognizable at first because, rained on and run over by cars and tossed across perhaps miles by steady daily breezes, the knot that had been tied in it now resembled a stone, the ribbon itself the most miserable strands a beggar ever wore.  Yet something in the memory clicked to remember a fury of enthusiasm, someone else's rather than your own, which was what the knot had once meant.  The knotting of the muscles behind the shoulders and the neck of a back hunched over all day at work or typing out letters of application for work or scrubbing the dishes or vacuuming the rug.  The knot that had been tied in the ribbon lifted one out of all that briefly, or that was the promise.  Come, be lifted, feel yourself flap in the wind, march with cracking snare drums in attendance.  Why would anyone wish to deny such a feeling?  There are enough cynics in the world -- does one really have to analyze this yellow ribbon that makes so many people feel so good?  Well, not me, but some people -- many, I suppose.  It is true that none of my friends seemed to respond to them positively; a number even mumbled complaints.  Most said nothing at all about them, the tacit agreement being that if we didn't speak they would soon go away.  But then maybe I just don't hang around with the right people for these types of things.

            In any case, the ribbons didn't go away.  They fell in tatters.  No one removed them.  Nor did anyone ever admit putting them up, at least that I know.  But I have pictures in my mind of those who did it. 

            I picture a woman who organizes a lot of different things and doesn't think anyone appreciates her, but while she gets angrier each day because of that, instead of ceasing to organize things each and every day, she instead organizes more and more.  She had decorated the town many times with banners and posters before the yellow ribbons came along, but when they did, she was angry that she had not put them up in her town before seeing them on TV.  At least she didn't have to see it in the newspaper.  Hers would be the first town in the area at least.  People describe her with the word "tireless," but she's tired all the time.  Fatigue angers her even more, there's so much that needs doing to make the town look nice.  It will look nice when the town is all covered in yellow ribbons for the war.  People will want to take pictures, it will look so nice -- and, oh, she'll have to get a photographer to do shots for the tourist brochures and for the offices in the town building and the courthouse.  No one appreciates all of the nice things she does.  This will be the first town in the area to be decorated in ribbons; she'll have to remember to call the county newspaper as well.

            But she wasn't the first person to think about decorating the town.  The first person to think about decorating the town thought not just about this town but about the whole county, maybe even the tri-counties if he could move fast enough.  Everyone likes these yellow ribbons, but he knows there'll only be a small "window of opportunity."  What a phrase, "window of opportunity."  He doesn't make the ribbons himself.  He's a "people person," makes phone calls, drives around from place to place, gets prices, quotes prices, brings people together, that's what he does.  Now with a phone in the car, he's moving, moving, moving.  Any requests he gets from anyone to do anything his response is invariably the same.  Will do, will do, he says.  Gotcha.  Will do.    

            Tony.

            Ruth?  This's Tony, sorry about the bad connection, I'm on the car phone, but I got it all set up, got the price, Federal Express, you'll have the whole town covered in ribbons by tomorrow night.

            Well, that part is for me to worry about, but you're sure you can get them here by morning?

            Yeah, don't worry, will do.  I've got  ckkrxx   ckkkssxx   ckxrkssk

            What?  Tony?  Hello, Tony?  Are you there?

              ckkksccrkk   crkkxxxkk

            Tony I can't hear you.  Tony?  Hello.

            And the conversation is over, interrupted somewhere in ephemeral space.  The next day, though, the town is wearing ribbons.

            Says Ruth several weeks later: It was so wonderful to see everyone supporting the troops like that.  We don't see enough of that anymore, not like we used to.  But I think there's a real spirit coming back into the people in this country.  You see it in the young people.  (Her own son didn't want to have anything to do with her or her stupid ribbons.)  I just think it's nice when everyone supports the president and the soldiers who have to go away from home to fight for what's right.  It just gives everybody a really nice feeling.

            Says Tony: I hit the ribbon thing just right.  I don't know why, but I was right on top of it.  Lucky, I guess.  But you got to hustle, too, you can't wait a day when something like this comes up.  You wait a day and all of a sudden nobody wants to talk to you.  You can't even wait an hour.  Not even a minute, not when you really have to move.  So it really wasn't luck.  (He's having a drink, talking to his brother-in-law at a family party; the brother-in-law wants to go to the bathroom as soon as he can escape.)  That's why I'm successful.  I'm there when people need me, and I get them hooked up, bang bang.  So when you see me driving down Main Street in my Lincoln Town Car, you have to say, There goes a guy that hustles, and when you hustle, that's what you get.  I'll tell you, I bought my Lincoln right after the ribbons went up and it was such an incredible feeling, driving down the middle of that little town knowing that I had put up those ribbons like that in that town and had other things like that happening in Green Lake, Omro, Rosendale, throughout the area -- let me tell you, it was like I was the one returning home from the war and they were throwing me a parade.  It sounds dumb, but that's what I felt like, going down the street like that with the ribbons and my beautiful new car, I thought I was going to start seeing ticker-tape at any moment, I was so proud to be an American.

Tonto no get rid of dream.  Tonto can't get rid of dream.  Tonto where is rid of dream?  Dream persists and dream persists. 

            Tonto lives within a dream.  Tonto listens Kemosabe.  Kemosabe tells a dream.  This is Kemosabe's dream.  Set breaks down and actors leave.  See ya Fred see ya Hal.  Dream construction done for day dreaming the dream of 1940s.  Not Tonto's dream not Tonto's dream.  Tonto can't get rid of dream.  Dream persists and dream persists.

            When they came and took our way of living we said are you crazy are you crazy?

            When they came and took our way of living we asked them were they crazy?

            Now the buffalo will not come back.  No matter how long you sing father the buffalo will not come back.  The buffalo will not come back and the new possessors will not leave even if they are crazy.

            Ghosts return in the evening light.  They tell us of what’s long since gone.  They tell us of what’s long since gone returning in the evening light.  We respond to our missing lives by inviting ghosts back again and again inviting ghosts again and again.  But father the buffalo will not come back.  No matter how you sing the buffalo will not come back.

            Ghosts return in the evening light unreal things just dreams of the past.  The buffalo are long since dead and will not come back.  Father no matter how long you sing the buffalo will not come back.

            The Paiute saw a crow who told him the buffalo would return. 

            Don’t believe him father don’t believe him don’t believe him.  The Paiutes are as crazy as the new possessors.  They are crazy they are crazy.

            Ghosts return in evening light but are not real and do not bring that which we lost that which we lost.  They do not bring the buffalo.  They do not bring the buffalo no matter what the Paiute says.  Come we are Sioux and do not believe in reruns.

            Turn off the reruns and come enjoy the evening light.  Come enjoy the evening light the evening light.  You do not need ghosts you do not need ghosts you do not need reruns no reruns.

            A future time created dream of reruns when the buffalo return?  We do not want this do not want this.

            A future glow of related past when glories stood beyond the unseen feats of our possessors?  Come away from the light father it ruins your eyes.

            A future time made up of pasts and new creations to topple the possessors?  Come away from the light father it ruins your eyes and you cannot see.

            A future time when patriots’ glare light our hopes in eveningtime?  Do not look father do not look it isn’t real it isn’t real.

            Our future time a future time when the past returns in glory?  Do not look father do not look it isn’t real.

            A future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time a future time

            Do not look     it isn’t real     it’s just a rerun     does not exist     an evening glow     just a dream     a created thing     of future time     is not real     do not be crazy     the buffalo dead     will not return     it’s just a dream     it’s just a dream     it’s just a rerun     it’s just a rerun     we only respond to our missing lives by inviting ghosts again and again     inviting ghosts     again and again     inviting ghosts     again and again     inviting ghosts     again and again     again and again     bomb Baghdad    again and again     bomb Baghdad    again and again   bomb Baghdad   again and again   again and again   it's just a rerun   it's just a rerun