I was born in 1943 in Queens, NY. My parents were strict but gentle-spirited Christians who interpreted the bible literally. From when I was little, mom limped and used a cane because of rheumatoid arthritis. By the time I reached puberty, she was wheelchair-bound and her face was bloated from the cortisone shots she took for pain. She often watched Oral Roberts, an evangelist and faithhealer, on TV, hoping a miracle would cure her. But nothing helped. Not praying. Not our steadfast love of God. Instead, she grew worse. Still, my parents and I believed.

My belief, however, gradually weakened. When I was 8, the idea of a loving God letting mom suffer for no reason made me wonder what kind of "love" he felt for her. Plus, by the time I was 11 or 12, other factors also altered my faith. For instance, documentaries that showed Nazi concentration camps where millions of Jews were slaughtered made me ask why more German Christians hadn't risen up in their defense. Additionally, 1950s news coverage of white mobs and cops in the US attacking Negros demanding equality convinced me too many US white Christians were like the ones in Germany: hypocrites.

My changing ideas and personality developed further in highschool. Part doo-wop devotee, part novice poet, part highschool athlete, I at least superficially got along with my classmates. But I had another side also. Manic energy, dark angers. Increasingly unbounded by Christian beliefs, I tested my limits.  

I graduated highschool in 1961, then attended college just outside NYC. There, I felt free to spread my wings. Consequently, in less than a year, I evolved  into a long-bearded  "free-thinking," writer-wannabe aching to earn my beatnik credentials. Along the way, I started drinking heavily to boost my confidence. I persisted in this lifestyle for five years, earning a B.A. in spite of my chronic class absences, theatrical behavior and drunken blackouts. I considered myself a student of the streets.

My parents were worried sick. In their eyes, Satan was tailing me wherever I went. Still, although our relationship was rocky to say th least, we remained emotionally attached.  

A year before I was drafted, one night, already stewed, I stopped two cops on the street to ask if there were any area bars still open. Based on my beatnik appearance and the abundance of anticommunist epithets at the time, one of the cops hissed, "You fuckin' Bolshevik!" The next thing I knew he punched me until I fell to the ground, where I passed out and awoke later in a holding cell. In court the following morning I was charged with assaulting a police officer, then given a plea deal—either six months in jail or a possibly briefer stay in a mental institution. Hungover and jittery, I took the deal, although resentfully. Yeah, it was stupid of me, looking like a wildman, to approach them when I was drunk, but it was still one of the cops who assaulted me, not the other way around. My only crime was being "different."

At the hospital things didn't improve. After I settled in, a number of patients told me they'd come for a few days, but had been there now for months. Or years. Hearing this, I grew edgy. Consequently, over the next days, I was forcibly sedated twice for refusing to obey orders. But eventually, with help from my assigned psychiatrist, I adjusted. Sort of. As a shrink, he was a mixed bag. He aggravated me by minimizing what the cops did to me and telling me my anger was misdirected. Conversely, although he diagnosed me as manic depressive (called bipolar today), he wrote in my file that I didn't pose a threat to others. That's what got me released after only a few weeks. However, at our last session, he told me, "Don't forget, boat-rockers always fall in the water." Although I thought my shrink's final remark was too smug, I realized he was onto something about my depression. As it turned out, clinical depression has plagued my life.

However, although I'm a depressive, this doesn't mean it's the sole cause my sometimes erratic behavior, angry poems and political activism. Society itself has given me more than enough impetus to behave in ways considered renegade by many. Herr Doktor missed that part.

I understood all this better after my military service. Indeed, my service helped me to grasp it. As a Census Clerk in an army hospital in Germany during Vietnam, I daily visited each ward to tally its admissions and discharges. In the process, I chatted with patients and sometimes, if their stay was prolonged, got to know them. Although the hospital didn't specialize in treating the war's injured, we nonetheless had our share, including patients who suffered combat-related mental disorders.

Many of the brass and noncommissioned officers badmouthed these patients as either fakers trying to con their way to an early military discharge or as "not true men"—i.e., they were too cowardly to fight. Longterm, such harassment only deepened these soldiers' anxieties and their sense of being unwanteds.

But even if there were a few schemers among them, the idea that they were all shirkers was a slander concocted by little minds. If you paid attention to these patients, the panic in their eyes, as they cowered in their beds terrified by scenes no one else could see, proved they weren’t actors. Their minds were temporarily broken.  

oday of course this has a name—PTSD. But back then the army and other services refused to admit its existence or their obligation to treat it. Today, although in more indirect ways, this problem still exists. In fact, the VA, like the Washington government of which it's a part, has been masterful over the years at underserving vets with regard to not only PTSD, but also for Agent Orange's side effects, the negative health impacts of military burn pits, and the disproportionate suicide and depression rates among combat vets of wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and/or Iraq.

This government failure mirrors its maltreatment of other population sectors too—people of color, the poor, women, workers, etc. These issues and others are all interrelated.

The government's inertness in these instances, no matter which party's in control, is what protects the nation's elites. This slothfulness has been engineered into government. Yes, smaller-scale changes occur, but the more massive and systemic ones needed are constantly sidetracked.

This is why in 2023 we're splintered by many of the same issues that divided us when I was younger. We haven't moved forward far enough, fast enough. We haven't thought outside the box enough.

I conclude this note with a poem written years ago for an old friend.

╫

Love Song For Browm

At the Legion picnic drinking beer from a keg, you hobble with the has‑beens your one full leg

as I listen to you mumble how below your stump the ghost-limb’s blood pulses and thumps

and then you recite the details of a dream where you reel through paddies in which children scream.

I’d kiss you Brown and drive away the pain but my lips were amputated in the Indochinese rain.