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Jungle Surrender after Don Cooper's painting Ghosts share us with the past & future but we struggle to hold on to each breath. Moving toward what waits behind the trees, the prisoner goes deeper into himself, away from how a man's heart divides him, deeper into the jungle's indigo mystery & beauty, with both hands raised into the air, only surrendering halfway: the small man inside waits like a photo in a shirt pocket, refusing to raise his hands, silent & uncompromising as the black scout dog beside him. Love & hate flesh out the real man, how he wrestles himself through a hallucination of blues & deep purples that set the day on fire. He sleepwalks a labyrinth of violet, measuring footsteps from one tree to the next, knowing we're all somehow connected. What would I have said? The real interrogator is a voice within. I would have told them about my daughter in Phoenix, how young she was, about my first woman, anything 37 but how I helped ambush two Viet Cong while plugged into the Grateful Dead. For some, a soft windy voice makes them snap. Blues & purples. Some place between central Georgia & Tay Ninh Province— the vision a knot of blood unravels & parts of us we dared put into the picture come together; the prisoner goes away almost whole. But he will always touch fraying edges of things, to feel hope break like the worm that rejoins itself under the soil . . . head to tail. 38 ...

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