Missing Things

It's the time of year for missing gloves and mittens. Walk nearly any roadside, parking lot, or sidewalk and you'll find them, squashed and soggy, naturally dirty, but clearly still mittens and gloves. I don't understand this. How could you not know that a mitten had fallen off? Didn't that hand feel cold? And if you knew it was gone, why wouldn't you go back to get it? I can understand children's wear, but I'm seeing a great number of adult items this year. Soon it will be the time for glasses. Three pair(s) I found last summer. This too is a mystery: do you not realize that you can no longer see? And wouldn't you go back to that line in your mind where all of a sudden the world got fuzzy? In all honesty, I have lost some glasses in my lifetime, but each involved special circumstances: my first two pair(s) were intentionally ditched over the side of the Patroon Island bridge some years back coming home from a Pentecostal healing service. Listening to the evengelist I became convinced that glasses were like a sharp stick in God's eye. Good lord, if we had faith the size of a mustard seed we could not only move mountains but alter the shape of our eyeballs, yes? Of course faith demands a sacrifice, a sign that you truly believe, so mine flew out the window at fifty miles per hour, followed almost immediately by the spare pair(s) in the glove compartment. Had I clung to those as a fallback position God most surely would not have honored my faith and I would remain half-blind. It was a long summer of squinting and bad driving. I did, in fact, lose the third pair but that was during near-hurricane conditions while running the Point Pleasant marathon, and I was in so much pain that I finished the race not knowing I no longer had them. So that doesn't count, not like all these other idiots that have no excuses. Fall seems to bring out stray nuts and bolts. Everywhere I look there they are. I actually found three pair(s) of them while raking leaves last year! Are you kidding me? NO! Something is completely falling apart on my lawn. Must be late at night when everyone's asleep, so I am always very careful now when operating any of my own machinery. You can't be too careful.

A Man Named Clay

Birthing a song is like passing a stool after a long week of constipation. I started this song in the parked car of a suburban YMCA lot just last Sunday morning. While my wife sweated with all the pretty people of East Greenbush I stayed alone in the backseat with my guitar and a notebook, jumping out periodically to turn the car on for warmth. Yeah, a few cars stopped to observe before moving on to look for parking spots. But they hadn't spent time with Clay... (You can listen to this song at the following address: http://www.acidplanet.com/components/embedfile.asp?asset=1240733&T=6121

This is the story of a man named Clay
And the things he did for the USA
This is the story of a country wide
That sent its Clay to a countryside
That was long and thin, it was cut in two
It was hot as hell and rainy too
Clay was long and thin, only seventeen
And he wore a gun as a young Marine

In Sixty-Nine while Woodstock played
Vietnam had it in for Clay

He left his home when his country called
And he went alone, two tours he hauled
A pack full of memories that were sharp as steel
Like shrapnel wounds that would never heal

'cause Clay took point near the DMZ
He took it for his friends, for you and me
In a war he won on the battleground
But the White House lost, it was never found

Clay returned to a country wide
That was split in two like a great divide
He went to that wall made of polished stone
Where for eighteen months he remained alone

Standing watch, standing guard
Eighteen months but it wasn't hard
As the twenty-four he did in 'Nam
As a Clay Marine for Uncle Sam
Had Semper Fi stamped on his chest
And the men he led were among the best
Now they're dead and gone, names on a wall
Near the iron gates of the White House lawn

That was long ago but the Clay remains
Walking point alone on the western plains
His battles rage nearly every day
Chasing ghosts of war and the NVA

This is the story of a man we lost
In a war we planned but didn't count the cost
To the men like Clay, a quarter-million more
Who made it safely home but never left the war

Hush little baby don't you cry
Nixon will sing you a lullaby
Hush little baby don't say a word
Westmoreland will get you a freedom bird
The Commandant made you a tough Marine
Now Congress will buy you an M-16
Your left, right, left
Your left, right, left
Your left, forever...left

A Dangerous Game

Mike Riese's son Josh wrote this for his brother Kyle after Kyle had a close call. I think it's a great, heartfelt poem, and am very pleased to put it out here, with permission.


Every afternoon we play games with Death.

Daring him to grab our hands as we climb higher.

Laughing with him as we sled down ice covered roads.

We taunt him as we hang upside down over the quarry.

Cause every afternoon as we grow older we know.

We know that some afternoon Death will find us,

Finally catch up after years of hide and go seek.

But I never knew how Death would come dressed to meet us.

Whether he'll be wearing his cancer tee

Or maybe his heart attack sweats.

I always pictured him in his brain aneurism cap

Smiling like he knew all along.



Never did I think you were still hanging with him.

Daring him to beat you to the bottom of the bottle.

Never did I think of Death as a drinker.

And who knew that he was any good at playing asshole.

But, the truth of the matter is that he does drink,

And he nearly killed you with those bottles of Jack.

Six breaths a minute are only a few away from a free ride

in Death's pick-up truck.


But you won.

You won little brother

And not by much.

Even though I don't like it I know

You will continue to hang with him.

Continue to play games.

But just because he isn't around one night

Doesn't mean you have to go out and meet up with him.



Joshua M. Riese

Hamburger Helper and Syd Vicious

As most of you know I have five children, ranging from ten to twenty-one. Sydney,the middle child, is eighteen, a senior in high school, and a pretty good athlete. Her teammates sometimes refer to her as "Syd Vicious," but I never quite understood why. I do now.

Jen was doing a 12-hour shift at the hospital yesterday, so I was on dinner duty after work. She had laid out for me all the fixin's for Hamburger Helper: Cheeseburger Edition (HH:CE), at Sydney's request. But Syd wasn't home come dinner time. She had lacrosse practice, and none of the other kids wanted Hamburger Helper. We took a vote and decided on regular hamburgers instead. They came out nice. Taylor, the nineteen year old, made them, caving in the raw meat centers as per Martha Ray so that the burgers don't hump up in the middle. Nice touch. As we were all basking in the afterglow of our burgers, Syd pulled in, Starvin' like Marvin, as they say. Turns out she'd been telling her whole team about how she couldn't wait to get home from practice because hot HH:CE would be ready and waiting for her.

It wasn't pretty.

Levi (the boy, age 13)and I hid when we heard her coming because we knew what she was capable of. We scrunched down in the dark on the far side of my bed, over by the wall, hoping she wouldn't find us. We could hear her tearing the place up out there in the kitchen, yelling and punching the wall. We could see her shadow passing by in the hallway under the closed bedroom door, back and forth, hunting for me. Our luck finally ran out and the door flew open. I think the dog gave our position away, cringing with pathos from the bottom of the bed. I got up on my knees laughing, trying to explain, trying to find some lie that would work. It felt like I was in one of those hostage videos, on my knees begging for mercy as Syd, in her fuzzy green bathrobe, loomed over me:

"DAD! I JUST GOT FINISHED TELLING MY WHOLE TEAM THAT I COULDN'T WAIT TO GET HOME AND HAVE HAMBURGER HELPER! MOM TOLD YOU TO MAKE HAMBURGER HELPER! WHY DID YOU MAKE HAMBURGERS? I HATE YOU!!!" And then she stormed off to take a shower.

Sneaking back to the kitchen once it was safe, I asked Taylor what we should do. She's an Actuarial Science major at college, good with numbers, able to lay out the odds of my rehabilitation with Syd Vicious. She suggested we take the one and a half remaining hamburgers and chop them up, allowing us to make a modified HH:CE. "Do you think it will work?" "Yes dad, it will be fine. Let me handle it." Within ten minutes we were good to go. Syd had stormed into her room and slammed the door. Taylor, Levi, Madeline and I crept down to her door with a hot bowl of HH:CE, flung open the door, threw the bowl on the floor and slammed it behind us, like when you feed a lion at the zoo or something. We were laughing our rear ends off, of course, and then ran down to the kitchen.

"Syd Vicious." Yeah, I can see it now. It fits.

Death of a Legend

I received word yesterday that a Marine had died, a very good Marine. That's not so uncommon these days, since they're dying in two countries at the present moment. But this one didn't die in combat, though the Vietnamese gave it their best shot many years ago. The Marine who couldn't be killed had three purple hearts. He was a big, tall man, long and lean, a machine gun squad leader. That made him an especially ripe target, and three separate times between 1969 and 1970 the enemy hit that target, but they never scored a bulls-eye. I met him when he was thirty, ten years after his first war, but I thought he must have been fifty because I was only nineteen and scared to death of him. He had scars. He swore. He had medals, lots of them, and a rare, threatening smile set beneath sad, scowling eyes that I could tell had seen things I could only guess at. He was never personally mean to me, or cruel, but always, always demanding, as a good company gunnery sergeant should be.

I have many memories of him, but the one that stands out most is of the day he inspected the guard shack as I trailed in tow, praying for a positive outcome. I was the Corporal of the Guard, and it was my guys who had done the cleaning and now wanted to go off duty. Everything was going well until he got to the urinal. I knew we had brushed it out and wiped it off, so I wasn't concerned. The gunny knew all the secret places, though, the real heart-breakers. I stood mortified with my little clipboard at my side as he dipped into the bowl and plucked out the urinal mint with his bare hand as casually as if he was reaching for popcorn. Didn't he know you're not supposed to touch those things? I mean, you just don't know where they've been! Yes, there was hidden filth under that mint. As I recall, the gunny never even said a word. He just looked at me with those hound dog eyes, holding the mint up for me to see before tossing it back in disgust. I was disgusted, but he was just having fun. I think only a man who had repeatedly cheated death could have done such a thing. And yes, we went on liberty late that day.

I last worked for the gunny in the fall of 1981, but I saw him many times over the next 30 years. He came to me often at night, in my dreams, knocking at the door of my house to drag me back into his Corps. I always tried to explain that there must be some misunderstanding, that I was out, discharged, civilian, but he would have none of it. He'd just give me that smile and say I must be wrong, and away we would go, into the night. I didn't like him much as a young man, and I didn't like him coming to my house. But when I found out recently that he was well aware of many of our foolish antics up at Camp David, things we thought we'd kept hidden, well, I started to see him differently. And when I found out that it was Lou Gehrig's Disease that finally felled him I began to mourn. It seems a particularly cruel end for one who'd given so much to this country over more than three decades of service. I hope that he comes back one last time to visit me. I think this time maybe I'll welcome him... So goodnight, Louis Goodman, wherever you are, and Semper Fi. You will be missed.

Under a Blue Colorado Sky

This is a song that woke me from sleep the other day at 4:00 AM. It was written and given life by 9:00, recorded from the desk in my living room by 9:00 the next morning and then uploaded to www.acidplanet.com. You can hear it by searching for my name under "artists." It's a song based on some e-mail conversations with a friend from my Camp David days (he's the one on the right). He went into law enforcement, I went into an office. He's been attacked by knife-wielding assailants, run through forest fires, and stared down the barrels of hostile guns. Sure, I've had my share of staple puncture wounds and paper cuts, especially the ones on my tongue from licking envelopes, but...

they don't write songs about bureaucrats.


Under a Blue Colorado Sky

Youthful dreams of a place in the sun, we all had them, and the dreams took us places
We could never imagine the things we would see or the fun and the smiling faces
We donned green uniforms in the last of our teens and we trained hard for country and Corps
Then most of us climbed down The Hill where it seemed that our lives couldn't wait any
more...

I put down the green and I picked up the blue
Colorado prepared me for peace
But I found that the peace of the Rockies was hard
It's an undeclared war at the least

I've had to run through the flames of man's fire
Nearly 200 feet they just couldn't get higher
And it nearly came right down to the wire
Under a blue Colorado sky

I'll never forget that terrible day
When I heard the voice on my radio say
That the Columbine kids were being killed as they prayed
Under a blue Colorado sky

I can't put into words that you might understand
There's no way to convey what I see
So I'll look to the heavens, I'll look to the birds
And let the silence of the winds speak for me

A chopper crash once took some men
Among the dead was a special friend
He went down in the trees then he rose again
Under a blue Colorado sky

And my good friend died of a gunshot heart
His wife raises six kids alone
A bullet's bite from some fool's jealous spite
Left him cold as the Columbine stone

I've seen men suffer and I've seen them die
Babies too while their momma's cry
But the saddest thing is to say good-bye
Under a blue Colorado sky

Now I don't ask questions, I don't ask why
I just trust that when God says it's my turn to die
That he'll grant me the grace to say good-bye
Under a blue Colorado sky
Under a blue Colorado sky

The Patriot Bowl

I can't get it out of my head. I wish I could, but I can't. It's been three weeks since America the Beautiful, the National Anthem, the military color guard, the Navy Blue Angels fly-by and of course, the Super Bowl. And yes, it was an outstanding contest. Let's forget that I had to leave the game with five minutes left and that it was by all accounts the best five minutes of football all year. Whatever, I'm over it. No, what I can't seem to shake off is, of all things, the coin toss.I thought it to be the most portentous coin toss I've ever seen.

Did you notice it?

General Petraus flipped it from the fifty yard line. He looked so small standing there in his best green smile and his dress green uniform, all jangly and medally, next to the gathered gridiron heroes on either side. Who knows, if Pat Tillman hadn't joined the Army maybe he would've been there in Cardinal red next to the smiling little general. But he wasn't there. He was just dead, accidentally shot by his own men, as it turns out, after the media finally water-boarded the Army into confessing. The coin looked oversized and heavy, perched on the 4-star thumb, and it launched with greater effort than usual, I thought. Heads. Tails. Some live, some die. The coin flopped lazily through the stadium air like a fat girl being thrown from a horse, and plopped onto the turf with the same dull thud that my daughter's hamster makes when he drops off the top bars of his cage. Or the same sound a gut-shot soldier makes when he flops onto the dirt.

But it's getting better, isn't it?

Isn't that why the general was smiling at the big game?

I met a sergeant the other day just back from Iraq. He was an EOD guy, a bomb defuser, and he was jumpy as a cat, worse than me. I mean, I flinched the other night while opening a package of flour tortillas. A soft package, it was, not crinkly and hard like you get with cheese doodles, and I don't even have a reason to BE that way. But trust me, this sergeant would have jumped at tortillas dropping onto a bed of cotton balls. So I asked him: How's it going over there? He shook his head and grimaced as he made that universal symbol of uncertainty, mensa-mensa, with his hand, the one that looks like you're flipping fresh tortillas from off a sun-beaten rock in Iraq. Where grimacing generals belong...