alBAHquerque

Couple: SWAT Storming Traumatic

Imagine if this couple had legally possessed a weapon and legally had it in hand against this home invasion. They’d be dead now.

ABQJournal Online » Couple: SWAT Storming Traumatic

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writeron Wed, Apr 18, 2012

Bertha and Carlos Gamboa were watching TV in their home last week when SWAT officers with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office broke through a door and ordered the couple at gunpoint to lie on the floor.

The deputies were executing a search warrant April 10 at an apartment two doors away from the Gamboas’ home in connection with the deaths of two people whose charred remains had been found earlier that day on the West Mesa.

But the Gamboas had no connection with those deaths, the couple said. A week later, the Gamoas remain traumatized that armed men stormed their home and held them at gunpoint for up to 10 minutes. …

Deputies used a battering ram to break through a wooden outer door, she said. When Bertha Gamboa opened her solid wood door, she saw the muzzle of a shotgun thrust toward her.

About seven deputies armed with shotguns entered the apartment and ordered the couple to lie on the floor, she said.

“Carlos was frozen, standing in the living room,” his wife recalled. Carlos Gamboa, who doesn’t speak English fluently, did not understand the deputy’s order. Bertha Gamboa said she told her husband in Spanish to lie down.

For the next five to 10 minutes, armed men stomped around the apartment until one of the deputies explained that they had the wrong apartment, she said.

ABQJournal Online » Couple: SWAT Storming Traumatic

Election

When did our best and brightest become our worst and crudest? Thank the GOP.

The GOP proves government is a joke by electing punchlines and dolts.

ABQJournal Online » Wiener: ‘Absolutely Nothing Untoward’

Dan McKay / Journal Staff Writeron Thu, Apr 26, 2012

Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener with several women outside a bar in Angeles City. Wiener said he posed with the women at the photographer’s request. (Photo by John Keatley)

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ABQJournal Online » Wiener: ‘Absolutely Nothing Untoward’

2011 A Virtual Chapbook

The Bright Side

“When he’s dead,”
she says,
“I’ll finally get that dishwasher.”
“And when she’s dead,”
he says,
“I’ll knock a pass-thru to the kitchen.”

Either could have what they want now
but these are little improvements
they can look forward to
as if one day
the end of the world
could have a bright side
like that trip to Europe
after the dog dies. mjh

11/14/2004

There could be an upside to death, at least, for the survivors.

Listen to The Bright Side

My Virtual Chapbook (table of contents)

Update 2012: She got her dishwasher and he got a counter far better than a pass-through and nobody had to die, yet. http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/uncategorized/kitchen-remodeling-for-dummies/

2011 A Virtual Chapbook

The Heaven of Animals

The meadow is his home now.
Up high in the mountains,
he lies in the shade
in a circle of trees
among the wild iris.

He yawns and stretches,
flips over
and rolls and rolls,
groaning in pleasure
in the tall sweet grass.

At any moment
he will sit up, alert,
ears sharp,
sniffing the air,
eyes intent on something
we can’t see
off under the trees.

His world is perfect now,
though I know he misses
the pats, the belly rubs,
the love in our voices:
lie down.
stay now.
good boy. mjh

7/7/2004

I wrote this five years before Lucky Dog died, remembering a beautiful spot the three of us discovered. And, imagining the inevitable, I sobbed. This supports my hope that “any horror could be faced / and become a poem.”

I borrowed the title from a poem by James Dickey. If you’re looking for that one, here’s a link. And, here’s a poem I wrote soon after Dickey’s death in 1997.

Listen to The Heaven of Animals

My Virtual Chapbook (table of contents)

2011 A Virtual Chapbook

Dickey

He caught
an adolescent’s mind
with sex
and wreckage,
a tragic fall,
and the grotesque
sheep child.
His was poetry
deformed and twisted
and I could not look away.
I had no words of my own
no tongue for lust
or sorrow
mouth open but mute
horny as hell
afraid I was ugly
sure that the world was.
He confirmed that and
changed it in the process.
The long fall turned beautiful
in the end because
any horror could be faced
and become a poem. mjh

18Apr97 – Las Cruces

I wrote this poem 14 years ago today. James Dickey died January 19, 1997. He was among the first modern poets I studied and enjoyed. I tipped my hat to him with my version of The Heaven of Animals.

Listen to Dickey

My Virtual Chapbook (table of contents)

Election

GOP’s "scorched-earth political opposition"

Are we the amnesia electorate? I forget.

The Amnesia Candidate – NYTimes.com

Overall employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in the administration’s early months. That compares favorably with the Bush era: as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million below its level when Mr. Bush took office.

Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking place? Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of public job losses have been either in Texas or in states where Republicans recently took control.

Which brings me to another aspect of the amnesia campaign: Mr. Romney wants you to attribute all of the shortfalls in economic policy since 2009 (and some that happened in 2008) to the man in the White House, and forget both the role of Republican-controlled state governments and the fact that Mr. Obama has faced scorched-earth political opposition since his first day in office. Basically, the G.O.P. has blocked the administration’s efforts to the maximum extent possible, then turned around and blamed the administration for not doing enough.

The Amnesia Candidate – NYTimes.com

2011 A Virtual Chapbook

flea

From afar
I am drawn
to this mountain.
I step on his feet,
climb his knee,
over his hip,
and run along his long spine,
up between great shoulders.
Ahead I face the summit.
From his crown
I look down
and around
and around.
Here near his ear
I listen to silence
and breathe the cold light
as a flea on a giant. mjh

1/4/2005

Listen to flea

My Virtual Chapbook (table of contents)

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams