What happens when two Vietnam veterans and a civilian artist get together for a hot mocha and lunch in a parking lot? Questions like this pop up.

Why should we bother telling anyone anything about our combat experience. Polite society doesn’t want to hear about it. Nobody really cares.

What’s the damn point?

Ben, one of the veterans on our team, came back with an instant answer.
“Telling my story releases the pressure. It helps me feel better. Talking about it didn’t work when I first got home. It took me years to be able to talk about it.”

I’ve never been to war. But the question was out there.
I didn’t have an instant answer. But, it finally showed up in this odd poem.
 

What’s The Point

Everyday, Everyday
I hear this question
Inside my head
Around my head
Above and below my head

What’s the point ?
Really, What is the point?

What’s the point of even trying to make a point?
Trying to make a difference.
Trying to care, even just a little, about the future of others
Trying to unwind even just our own wounded hearts

What’s the point of Asking Why?
Asking how come?
Asking how so?
Asking What if or Why not?
Or even asking
Why am I standing on my own tongue?

Our world is crackling up in smoke
Death wanders our streets in his or her invisible blanket
Death lives on the menus of precious foods
Death thrives on our salt shakers, teaspoons and fingertips
It smiles on a kiss or a handshake

The glam is off the sheen
The glam lies in mud
The glam feeds but it can not nurture

So what’s the point?
Why push or dare or try?
Why try to see the beauty in the vision of another?
Why try to wish away the wind
Why try to touch the edge of mystery?
Why try to serve?

What’s the point?

Ahhh,

Why not buy stuff?
Why not take stuff?
Why not steal stuff?
Why not hide stuff?

Why not hold stuff, the more the better,
Let stuff be our badge of honor, prestige, rank and power

The glam is off the sheen
The glam lies in the mud
The glam feeds but can not nurture

So
What’s the point?

To be the man or to see the man
To be the woman or to see the woman

To be the priest or the preacher of this side or that
Or
To reach for the center
Listening, Learning

How bout this?
Let’s build a massive pile of glammy stuff to hide behind
A mountain of stuff that sparkles with rational know-how
A mountain of stuff that gleams with priceless maybe useless performance

A mountain of stuff that lets us speed with our hair in the wind
To the far ends of our wheelhouse.

And there, we park ourselves as a clump of misplaced clay.
Spinning dissonance and shattering harmony
Down every spoke and tine to our very core.

Our center is under siege
It is losing it grip
Losing its bearing
Losing even its call for the grace of blessed grease

Our center is calling now
For your hands
For my hands
For all our hands
Calling for weavers of tiny shreds of truth
Calling for grit
Calling for connection, collaboration and community

Asking each of us
To lift each other up to become
Our fuller selves
Our creative selves
Our valued and honored selves
Our belonging selves

And What if,
All we can muster is to lightly brush the hem of this beauty?

What if,

That is the point?