The truthful and heartcentered letter below is from poet Dana Patillo who is a born and raised Okie. He was 5 when President Kennedy was murdered. The thing about poets that is often far different than mianstream newsmedia, is many poets tell truths from the ground up, not from gilded ideals in the sky, heavily filtered down over the populace.
My dad, from the Old Country, used to say [and he was a conservative]
“I’d sooner trust a man
who can build a cabin
from the trees that grow there,
than a man who seeks
to build a golden house of cards.
And asks me to buy it.”
Many of us elders have changed with the times, being informed and often shocked from watching the nice garden peeled back from the presidencies showing what really ‘lies under’ especially about lies and shining the tin that have caused death to others: wmds, the silver salver of GI bodies offered up for a jungle war that presidents had no will nor order given to win. It goes on. Crushing the spirit of truths by its prevarications and false witness.
I know many persons whose ideas range left right center. And, by my sights, and sadly when I read many media reportages, I see the narrowed vision of left right center… this being an incomplete way of assessing situations: there’s also one-inch deep, modge podge decoupage over filth, and then there’s depth, and realness, unclad. I’d wish for all to be in whatever assessment of our government, and the ‘news’ that is flung to the populaces, too often as red meat meant to sell something, rather than as true nourishment meant to teach, tell, educate, understand.
I still hold hope regardless of the daily onslaughts against decency.
Let us continue…
Here is Dana Patillo on JFK, a tender and real report in the form of a letter.
“As to the JFK paroxym, I find all the solemn hoopla to be unseemly; more overwrought, pained nostalgia than mourning for Kennedy the person, who has become a sort of vessel for all the unresolved feelings of those who lived through the time of the assassins, and cathected secondhand by those a few years younger.
“I was five years old when Kennedy was shot, I don’t really remember where I was when the news came as so many people claim to; if I ever did, it has long since been overwritten so to speak by all the endless replays of the footage from the time. So, I was one of the cathected secondhand. I think I remember watching the funeral, the caisson, John Jr. in his short pants saluting, all that, but, again, the endless replay over the years make me doubt that. I’m not sure I even knew who the President was, or what “President” was. I lived in my own kingdom of beholding then, even more so than now.
“What I do remember is when my Grandfather died a few months later (It may have been early spring 1964, but the weather was cold and sere), we drove down to Luling, Texas from Oklahoma City, for the funeral, and of course we passed through Dallas. My Dad stopped the car at Dealey Plaza, and we all got out and solemnly tromped around. I remember that vividly. I stood on the “grassy knoll” at age 5, a few months after the assassination. My feelings about the whole event is mixed up with Grandpa’s funeral, my memories of him, memories of the places in Texas where my father grew up, various relatives on that side of the family like Uncle C.P., stories they told, and so on. LBJ is the first president I clearly remember as President.
“For my fortieth birthday in 1998 my mate and I went to Dallas to see a Cirque du Soleil show. The next day we had breakfast in the West End of downtown and then went to Dealey Plaza and tromped about just as I had done at age five. Other than the trees, which were bigger, and all the graffiti on the fence where the second shooter supposedly stood, the place hardly changed at all, a piece of real estate stuck in time. The Book Depository now houses the “Sixth Floor Museum,” and we took the tour. The thing I remember about that is looking out the same window where Oswald had his sniper’s nest and thinking, “I could have taken that shot.” My Dad, who is a natural shot, could certainly have plugged Kennedy from that vantage. So I don’t really buy the idea that Oswald was just a decoy, and I find conspiracy theory to be a subgenre of theology, perfervid theodicy, really.
“The most pertinent thing I’ve gathered from all the coverage of the anniversary, is just how little difference there is between the atmosphere of rightwing hysteric hatred of an eastcoast Catholic Democrat President then and venomous distrust and hatred of the Tea Parts for the Black “Kenyan Socialist” now–That there is a certain subset of Americans that have learned nothing in fifty years, and taught it to their children. The only practical difference is that President Obama has much heavier security.”