Who Had Who When (Final Version)

Shifted and sifted

It wasn't so much the questions
I asked then: who had had who when
seemed obvious enough. At thirteen
history needed meat on the bones.

Like a charbroiled burger, side

of fries smothered in Worcestershire sauce.

I wanted to go diving for skeletons,
swing from the mainsail, cutlass in hand
shiverin' me timbers; stand tall

eyeball to eyeball with the Kid,

high noon by the OK corral
slapping leather.

Instead, all I got
was dry recital

of very ordinary people

living ordinary lives:

“This was history,” they said,
the real history

I'd have to learn to learn

the truth about who had had who.

Ken e Bujold

© 2022

Author's Note

Modifications to Stanza lengths, as well as shifting of certain lines and scan metrics. The original is still in my posts for now, if any wish to compare.

Reviews

[W. Barrett Munn]

This reminds me of Ken Burns and his documentaries that cut to realities in the core of history: the real real of who had who when.

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks. it is also the way history is...through the stages of discovery: youth wants to shoot em up..mid age be entertained..serious scholarly work what they had on their cheerios most mornings

[Temperance]

Enjoyable read, Ken. Those darn history books have a way of degrading our hero’s to much less than we made of them. Someday, todays happening will be in the history books. I wonder who the hero(s) will be? Nicely done! Temp

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks temp. don't know who tomorrows heroes will be but i can hazard a guess that they will be the ones who went about building and living ordinary lives, not the ones who sucked up all the oxygen spewing lies and division

[Fabian G. Franklin]

I enjoyed the read. The victors write the history books and spoil the truth. Perhaps that's why they say, "to the victor goes the "spoils". (smile) It's like when we read in our American history books that Kit Carson was a "brave Indian fighter" they conveniently negated the fact he was a bloodthirsty mercenary for hire sent to exterminate entire peoples and was a murderer of innocent women and children. By the time I got around to reading Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee I realized we had all been "had". Keep up the great writing, F.

[Ken e Bujold]

no argument from me that the history most people think they know is little more than monetized pulp for the masses. In reality, history is never as clear, or as one-sided, white hat black hat, as people wish it to be. Carson is a great example Fabian. On the one hand very much as you say a hard-hearted frontiersman who had no compunction about killing whoever he thought needed killing. On the other, a rather introspective man, given to bouts of melancholy over the way the west was being unalterably changed. Was also a devoted, if mostly absent father. When his first wife died, a native Arapahoe, he briefly left his explorations to try and raise the daughter they had, before eventually sending her back to Missouri to live with his kin. My point with this poem, and in general towards history, is that with few exceptions mankind is made up of the ordinary going about ordinary lives. Only the young, or the unserious students of our kind, fail to recognize this truth.

Ken

[Fabian G. Franklin]

Well, even a vulture looks out after its own young. It's actually quite a good parent. But, it's still a vulture. But the vulture doesn't generally kill so I have more kind consideration of it than Carson. There are extraordinary people who have lived exceptional lives but I agree that the greater majority do not. Some of my heroes have lived pretty exceptional lives like Jack London and O. Henry, Caravaggio and John Donne. As far as pirates go, Jean Lafitte was always my favorite after seeing the movie, The Buccaneer, with Yul Brynner when I was a boy.

[Cyprian Van Dyke]

Interesting write. It made me think. History is the present un-rehearsed. Not what we seem? Tyfs

[Ken e Bujold]

a very good analogy Cyprian, glad you enjoyed and thanks for stopping by

[andrew mitchell]

Great write Ken. Sometimes we just skim the surface looking for answers. So well said.

[Stuart Munro]

I wanted to go diving for skeletons ,,, liked lines , slapping leather ,,,,Great Poem Ken