"FACINGFACES 2002 - 04" SELECTED POETRY

MIS COSAS FAVORITAS
another perspective

Prologue:

Goodness has a thousand faces,
Malevolence, some believe,
has a thousand more.
And many of them
mock us south of the border.

Look at this face.
It is one of them.
Look hard. Be not cowed.
It will stare at you one day
unless you deal with it, now.

----------

When she begged for mercy,
that was a favorite thing.
But I wanted more, you see.
I wished her groveling at my feet
the fear of me--and my knife--complete.
That pleased me, another favorite thing.

I do this on dusty, trash-strewn flats
South of the city, no one around
to hear her screams, to stop me, Whack!
From knocking her down.
That was heaven, another favorite thing.

My power was absolute,
me, a sly nobody
sure got someone's attention, as would any brute
that day, and the next, and the next.
I plucked these other bodies
from street corners
with offers of free rides.

I exploited them, sure.
Many were glad to save a bus or taxi buck,
And I was there with a lure
to hell in a culvert's dry muck.
Almost my favorite of favorite things.

Why almost? The best thing was
no one else cared.
Politicians, cops, employers...
They had priorities, their own favorite things.
And these chicks were everywhere.
I got 'freebees', frankly speaking,
Because nobody but ME cared.

That was my most favorite thing.

ROBERT W. PROCTOR
USA
copyright 2002

A retired Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State, having
served in Nepal, Laos, Lebanon, Zaire, India and Sri Lanka, Robert Proctor and his Indian-born wife Etrennes now live in La Luz, New Mexico, a small Hispanic settlement some 90 miles north of El Paso, Texas. His poetry, short stories and travel memoirs frequently deal with his personal exposure to the horrors of terrorism and war.