Afghaneeland II

an epic poem continued

starring Col. Sheena Johnson & Capt’n Chuck Fiddler

& introducing Mamoodia

by

Rawclyde

!

~

episode 21

Taliban Focus

~

The woman in the yellow polka-dot burka

Comes back with a pot full of sweet tea

As Taliban bullets whistle & sing all around & always miss

The Taliban are so captivated they can’t hit her

~

She is so obviously good lookin’ under that burka

Such beauty glorifies the entire world

Makes it livable for humankind

And drives Taliban outta their mind

~

Ten thousand bullets miss the two Afghan soldiers too

Cuz’ they are her Afghaneeland friends

The three of them lounge on the blanket in the shade

And drink their tea

~

As the three musketeers partake

A moaning & a groaning grows louder & louder in the sky

Two A-10 Warthog aeroplanes approach

Looking for Taliban & find them

~

Behind the pile of boulders

The Warthogs find ten thousand of the culprits

And blast them into bloody pulp

While Col. Sheena Johnson & the Afghan soldiers sip their tea

~

episode 22

Battle Aftermath In Afghaneeland

~

Col. Sheena’s ex-Taliban husband

dressed like a waiter

comes up balancing on one hand

a platter of fried chicken & potato salad

~

Ever since the wedding with his lovely infidel

Habibullah’s mind has been doing triple flips

One day one way, the next day another

And today he is a really polite waiter

~

He sets the platter down

Infront of the three mouseketeers

Returns to the house to do the dishes

Col. Sheena & her soldier compadres pray & eat

~

Behind the pile of boulders

The last Taliban alive

Takes aim at Sheena right between the eyes

With his trusty AK-47 weapon

~

The devastatingly eye-enslaving empress of Pluckame

In her worn torn yellow polka-dot burka

Makes eye contact with the last Taliban alive & winks

The poor boy trembles, pulls the trigger & misses

~

The Afghan National Army GIs look at each other & shrug

“This is really good chicken,” one says

The other helps himself to more potato salad

And says, “This stuff is really good too”

~

Habibullah watches thru the window

As the hard brick of jealousy in his chest

Drops into his belly & melts into a gooey lump of love

For the legendary Col. Sheena Johnson

~

episode 23

Capt’n Fiddler Parachutes Into Pluckame

~

Ahhhhhhh, catapulting soaring roaring glory!

The boldness, the common sense of the U.S. Secretary of Defense!

Chuck Hagel has sold the entire U.S. Air Force’s A-10 Warthog Fleet

To the Afghan National Army for one dollar!

~

With a lot of training & expensive accoutrements

Now the ANA gots its own aging, rattling, deadly air-support

This Chuck is proud of that Chuck

For doing the right Chuck Chuck thing!

~

I am Capt’n Chuck Fiddler of the U.S. Army

Pulling my ripcord over the Nuristan Province of

Not Afghanistan, but Afghaneeland

A bubble full of wishful thinking inside my mind

~

A tiny dumb-ass bubble that refuses to pop

But that floats like a prayer in the ethereal reaches

Of a poor old soldier’s mind, so yes

I am parachuting out of a Warthog aeroplane above Pluckame!

~

Inside this strange bubble that will not stop

I’ve been training Afghan soldiers to fly

Now like a rain drop I am about to plop

At the feet of Col. Sheena Johnson

~

I shall serve wherever my empress be

Be it Afghanistan & be it free

So I float from above

To back the colonel’s love!

~

Yes, I float & whirl & twirl

Caught in a vortex of air swirling grand

Afghaneeland’s atmosphere gots a mind of its own

It looks like I’ll never land!!!

~

episode 24

A New Breed In The Village

~

Deception & camouflage & secret looks

Secret codes & secret trails to secret nooks

The glint of a knife & someone suddenly gone

Someone trusted suddenly faking a yawn

~

The U.S. Army colonel & her ex-Taliban spouse

Sneeking in & out of your very own house

Growing crooked, growing mean

A sudden realization that you’re a human being

~

Looking for God, looking for a friendly nod

Cleaning the dead enemy’s weapon with oil & rod

Not getting too rude while cooking some food

Trying to get some sleep but only able to brood

~

Then ye notice the bow, look close at an arrow

Accidentally shoot a poor innocent sparrow

Get the Goddess from God knows where

To finally see you & share

~

Some of her knowledge, some of her skill

Secret lessons, a miracle, a talent to kill

Hide like a gloomy secret agent everything that you are

An infinitely shining rapidly rising morning star

~

episode 25

Capt’n Fiddler’s Crash Landing

~

Floating up & down, floating all around

A floating nightmare unable to hit ground

I see Kabul, I see Herat

The parachute an eternal tea-party hat

~

Down below in Pluckame I see

The last Taliban setting fire to the voting shed

I loosen my artificial leg, it falls free

Like a smart bomb it hits him in the head

~

This vortex of wind is exasperating me

I shrug, embrace Afghaneeland reality

Dozing off with one leg left a dangle

I become a banner of star spangle

~

Sunrise sunset ticktocks by again & again

Dehydration comes along, hyperventilation too

Pretty soon I’m twirling with a crazy-boy grin

& a palpitating heart tells me I’m about thru

~

Then an arrow sticks into the heel of my one & only boot

Tied to the arrow is a very long string

This string gets taut as someone hauls me down

My last leg breaks when I slide across the ground

~

Mine is now a sorry plight

Without flight & without fight

Yours truly blacks out

& without light

episode 26

Coma

~

Aye, the coma long, the coma deep

The coma comatizes as in a coma I sleep

I levitate above the planet & my baboon race

I ricochet from orb to orb in outer space

~

I mingle with floating souls here & there

We meander dust-like without a care

Like molecules we form little critters & moss

Get tied together with webs of dental floss

~

An avalanche occurs & zillions are buried

No longer able to breath, a remnant of me is carried

Back to the Afghaneeland that I know

Dropped into a crack like a flake of snow

~

I hide out here for centuries without one melt

On a mountain ridge memorizing how it felt

To be alive like a snow leopard a sprint

Of the future a distant rumbling is one hint

~

episode 27

Coma II (Taliban Brains)

~

Crack a chunk of eggshell lying on the path

Murder is threatened with zealous wrath

The border gots holes, the mullah gots souls

Duck when ye dig-up yer leader’s secret goals

~

Holier-than-thou bumpkins shout

One thousand & one Taliban sprout

A mushroom cloud flowering in the sky

Pakistan spits in Big Bo’s eye

~

The pack on your back gets smaller & smaller

‘Til there’s no more to eat & nothin’s there

The enemy your mullah proposed gets taller & taller

‘Til he’s a mountain & curling clouds are his hair

~

Virgins circle around after a knock on the head

They’ve got long-feathered wings & oops, you’re dead

They chirp & chirp but you never get layed

You been buffaloed by the prayers you prayed

~

Grubby little Worm sails across the sea

He’s got ammo & a gun & he’s comin’ fer me

He blows me away, I’m gone now for writing this

A cloud now splattering him with piss

~

Ohhh a long endless coma is such bad news

Thoughts molesting n’ all I can do is snooze

Doggerel snapping at my fingers & gnawing on my shoe

Saved on the net & done yip-yipping at you

~

episode 28

Coma III

~

I love my magic carpet

I ride it every day

Now that I’m in a coma

I arrive right away

~

This morning while riding

In a shrunken state

Like an ant on a bread crumb

However, I was late

~

I was supposed to sing in

Mamoodia’s ear

Before she arose from her blankets

She’s up now without cheer

~

She peers at my somnolent form

on the mat in the corner

She is now wearing her burka

& I’m eternally the foreigner

~

Lost in a maelstrom deeper & deeper

Of comatose sleep nobody can understand

Nobody but he who voyages thusly

In strange strange Afghaneeland

~

Yes, lying there with plenty of time to think

I have discovered lots of things

How to do this, how to do that

& how to give Afghaneeland wings

~

Being as this strange land is

Really just a bubble in mine own head

I have discovered that it is I who is in charge

As I, yes, I twilight sleep on that thin bed

~

However, as I also ride my magic carpet

Here & there throughout the house

I discover my colonel

Sneaking a kiss with her ex-Taliban spouse

~

What a reminder is this!

How can it be that I rule this bubble

When Colonel Sheena Johnson rules me?

I, Capt’n Chuck Fiddler, gots trouble

~

Until I figure out what to do

I’ll continue my coma, my coma true blue

Where there is trouble, comfort may be found too

Mamoodia’s arrow stuck in the heel of my shoe

~

episode 29

Rug Rats

~

The brave people of Pluckame

Witness a convulsion of miracles in their village

In the wake of ex-Taliban Habibullah’s marriage to

Col. Sheena Johnson, errant U.S. Army

~

Habibullah’s resplendent wife via her inner ear is the recipient

Of the whispered guidance from afar of Saint Joan of Arizona

The reincarnation of Saint Joan of Arc

Whose trip from Mars to Earth is a tale in which we will not indulge here

~

I guess the exit of the U.S. Army out of Nuristan Province

And the mysterious return of the legendary colonel

Have expanded the probabilities of divine intervention

So that miracles occur one after another in Pluckame now

~

Such as the crash landing of yours truly

Capt’n Chuck Fiddler, retired U.S. Army

An artificial limb gone astray & my last leg broken

I lay in a coma and, alas, alive

~

In the corner of a back room in the humble home of the happy couple

Lay I in prostrate idiocy & miraculous survival & the ceaseless sacrifice

Of Habibullah’s cousin the unfathomable Mamoodia

Without her deft manipulations I would have died a long time ago

~

Lying in a seemingly endless coma I have managed to penetrate

The innermost laboratories of my dumb-ass brain to such a degree that

I have figured out how to miniaturize on a tiny magic carpet & fly

in & out of my left nostril to explore the doings of this household

~

Of course,  flying around in such a remarkable state amongst the

Brothers, sisters, parents, grand parents, aunts, lost uncles, dug-up ancestors &

Other popping in & out neighborhood orphans of Habibullah’s household

I couldn’t help but get discovered by ~ rug rats!

~

episode 30

Floating Low Floating High

~

Ollie & his rambunctious pals

Chase me around the house

They holler “Look out!” to all the gals

And step on an unfortunate mouse

~

With jar in hand & gleam in eye

Ollie chases a tiny man piloting a speck of lint

I on my flying rug darting low & high

Escape up the nostril of myself in a coma & a leg splint

~

Meantime the election of the president never ends

It goes on & on as rogues & soldiers fight & die

Homes are ruined, masses flee, the border guard grins

And bargains ruthlessly for fees low & high

~

Pluckame, oh Pluckame, where do thee roam

In this Afghaneeland bubble made of fantasy foam

Village floating low, oh village floating high

In the cloudy tumultuous Afghanistan sky

?

 ~

episode 31

Floating Above Afghanistan

~

“What’s going on?” says Mamoodia, her miracle belly

Quivering charmfully in a cold morning breeze

Her belly button puckering up & alert for a clue to today’s events

“We seem to be in a bubble floating in the sky”

~

Sheena grimaces & she surmises, “Fiddler’s doing”

She & I know each other like 2 buds on the same bush

Mamoodia, my savior, replies to Sheena, my other savior

“Uncle Chucky’s coma has him, & us too, soaring”

~

Sheena shakes her head scornfully

The two half-naked women stand on the mountain ridge

Well away from Pluckame, the Afghan village

Which is totally isolated now in Capt’n Chuck Fiddler’s Sufi Bubble

~

Which is just as well because women like this

Would not get along too well in war-torn Afghanistan proper

The whole mountain ridge is in a bubble now

Floating across the pale blue above Afghanistan!

~

On my tiny magic carpet I twirl like an insect

Around my two favorite ladies of the universe

Then return to my prone comatose body

Entering thru the wide-open corridor of my left nostril

~

episode 32

Sufi Arrows

~

Endless subterfuge becomes entwined in the Afghan run-off election

The Karzai government fires half the election committee

Replaces them with ballot-box-stuffing secret agents

Front-runner Abdullah Abdullah begins a protest movement

~

Ballot-box-stuffing secret agents?

Col. Sheena Johnson & her side-kick Mysterious Mamoodia

Two archers extraordinaire take articulate aim

From Capt’n Fiddler’s Sufi Bubble floating above Afghanistan

~

Hafiz Qari and Yousef Ahmadi

Stuff ballot boxes merrily in a tiny village

Lost in the outermost dusty districts of Afghanistan

In a village of 40 people 4000 votes for the runner-up materialize

~

Thunk!  Yousef’s eyes pop out

He’s got a sudden headache, a split-second later is knocked out

An arrow stuck in the top of his head

Special delivery from Mahmoodia of Pluckame

~

Capt’n Chuck Fiddler’s Afghaneeland Sufi Bubble

Takes extraordinary strides across Afghanistan’s pale blue

Arrows rain-down on ballot-box stuffers, they’re all knocked out

& a big bubble of miracle heads-out over the sea

~

Can an impossible bubble like this make a difference?

Maybe in a head or two somewhere & that is all

God only knows how the ripples from one pebble thrown in a pond

Spread & spread across the universe!

~

episode 33

Flying Booger

~

“Why do you look so close, so long

At this twilight sleeper’s face?” asks Mamoodia

Of Ollie who sits forever on my chest & peers

Up the nose of my unmoving physical self

~

“Because,” says little Ollie to his most beautiful cousin

“A tiny man on a magic carpet flies in & out

The sleeper’s crooked nose & I wanna know where he goes

So I can catch him & keep him in a jar”

~

Meanwhile below the floating Afghaneeland bubble

In the bubble-blowing war-torn land of Afghanistan

Those Afghans with Sufi arrows stuck in the tops of their heads

Wonder why they cannot remove the protruding feathered sticks

~

“Oh Ollie,” says Mamoodia to her little curious cousin

“Why must you imprison in a jar

This tiny man on his tiny carpet?

Why not let him be, flying around happy & free?”

~

Little Ollie looks up at bedazzling Mamoodia

Her naked navel nibbles at his little-boy eyes ’til

His soul is a bowl of pudding in Mamoodia’s hands

& Ollie cries out, “he is a flying booger!”

~

episode 34

An Order From Col. Sheena Johnson

~

The legendary Col. Sheena Johnson, errant U.S. Army

Notes after some observation & navigatory calculation

That Capt’n Chuck Fiddler’s Afghaneeland Sufi Bubble

Is floating over Murrieta, California, U.S.A.

~

The despicably beautiful colonel also notes

She is entrapped inside this orb

Manufactured out of unreal soap from the captain’s mind

But she is of higher rank & can issue orders thusly

~

However neither her or he is officially of the U.S. Army now

Each in actuality is a free moral agent of world reality now

But then again once a soldier always a soldier

So Capt’n Fiddler, although retired, will take an order

(From the devastatingly beautiful colonel)

~

She stands over the comatose body of the captain

Lain so wounded on the mat in a back room of her house

In the village of Pluckame on the Nuristan Province mountain ridge

That is enclosed inside Fiddler’s impossible bubble

~

Complication on top of complication has arisen

How can she issue an order to one in a coma?

Well, she simply verbalizes outloud, “Capt’n, blow this bubble back

To Afghanistan or I’ll cut off your balls.”

~

episode 35

Commander

~

Out of the watery depths of a deep coma I emerge

Upon opening my eyes I see my commander Lording it over me

Her latest order having just left the perturbing blossom of her delectable lips

Punctuated with a cutting threat that is irresistible

~

However, I am focused on my current mission like a hound chasing a rodent

And accordingly reply, “Colonel, we’re presently in position

 To wreck havoc upon short-sighted ignorant mortals

Who taint the reputation of the country to which we are devoted”

~

“Be more specific & brief,” says Col. Sheena Johnson

So Capt’n Chuck Fiddler, yours truly, spits it out

“Thousands of refugee children have crossed the U.S./Mexican border &

U.S. citizens are protesting in Murrieta, California”

~

“And you want Mamoodia & I to Sufi the protestors”

Adds the colonel knowingly.  She smiles.  I love her.

“And after we do this you will take us back to Afghanistan”

Her eyes are ice

 ~

episode 36

Transformation

~

I discovered when I was young

Below the border in a Tijuana bar

That everyone on planet Earth

Is a Mexican

~

All I had to do to know this was true

Was down another shot of tequila & look around

Sure enough

Everyone was a Mexican, even me

~

Now I look around & I see

Some people don’t believe this at all

How foolish they be

We’re all Mexicans & free!

~

So, as Col. Sheena Johnson

plucks a Sufi arrow from her quiver & takes aim

From her perch in our Afghaneeland Sufi Bubble

Hovering over Murrieta, California

~

Yes, as she takes aim

At the poor misguided U.S. citizens who are protesting

The arrival of a mere 60,000 unaccompanied refugee children

From those mysterious lands below the border

~

I know that with the release of the taut string of her Sufi bow

Those protesters in Murrieta can be believers

Twang!

And now they are Mexicans too

~

episode 37

The Elder Inside The Sufi Bubble

~

Tiny bubbles & colossal bubbles

All kinds of bubbles blowing in the wind

Full of Sufi miracles

Impossible to comprehend

~

Capt’n Chuck Fiddler’s Afghaneeland Bubble

Inside which resides the mountain ridge

On which is perched the village of Pluckame

Now hovers above a borderland of Afghanistan

~

Afghan National Army soldiers fire their guns

The Taliban keep a comin’ outta Pakistan

Faraway Iraq sucks up American air support

But for one strange bubble in the sky

~

Capt’n Chuck Fiddler’s Afghaneeland Bubble

The most viable support Afghan soldiers have got now

From the United States or from their own nation

Has them buffaloed & worried

~

No Afghan president yet to replace the old one

American firepower as good as gone

Pakistan nextdoor going nuts, refugees everywhere

And Taliban!

~

40 soldiers surrounded by 1,000 screaming enemy

And 10,000 ricocheting singing bullets

 Repeatedly look up & pray for a stray Warthog aeroplane

But all they see up there is a bubble!

~

Capt’n Chuck Fiddler’s Afghaneeland Bubble

Offers them as much soothing consolation as an unarmed goat

With a bell around his neck warning every Talib in the vicinity

That he is lamb-chops sneeking around

~

One Afghan patriot, Pvt. Ghani Gandhara, gets a bullet in the belly

Moans, gazes futiley at the sky & spies the damn bubble

 That pretends to be a Sufi miracle floating amidst the tumultuous clouds

 The wounded private cries out, “Ah shit!  Allah loves the Taliban!!!”

~

One of the oldest living faces on planet Earth shows up

Magnified magnificently on the soapy orb above the profusely bleeding soldier

And, thusly, an elder of the village inside it speaks forth to Pvt. Gandhara

“Have faith.  It’s all you’ve got right now.”

~

Tiny bubbles & colossal bubbles

All kinds of bubbles blowing in the wind

Full of Sufi miracles

Too wondrous to comprehend

~

episode 38

Hymn Hope

~

Haji Mujadooti an elder of Pluckame

Sits in a circle of cross-legged old ones on the floor of

Pluckame’s recently restored domed mosque

He wonders, “What now?”

~

The elders lackadaisically discuss

The presence of foreigners in their village

Fatalistically & realistically decide nothing

‘Cause nothing is up to them anymore

~

 That is, nothing is up to them except

The fate of the entire nation of Afghanistan applauding below

So impressed with this bubble hovering above their heads

Afghans near & far can’t stop clapping & hooting at it

~

Haji Mujadooti excuses himself, totters to his feet

Escapes up a zig-zag mountain-ridge trail, rests momentarily

Peers outside the bubble inside which his village consistently triumphs

He peers down thru the bubble at a real borderlands fight

~

Bullets pummel & dent the helmets of ducking ANA soldiers

40 Afghans hold their own against 1,000 Taliban wanna-be’s

Wanna-be men, wanna-be angels, wanna-be dead

The soldiers matter-of-factly load, aim, fire!

~

But Pvt. Ghani Gandhara has gotten shot in the gut

Blood is the river of no return

The ANA private rapidly loses corpuscles, strength, faith

Old Haji above beams him some hymn hope

~

episode 39

Sheena’s Teepee

~

Col. Sheena Johnson

U.S. Army legend

Sets-up a teepee above Pluckame

High on the mountain ridge

~

Here she hones her arrowheads

& prays to St. Joan of Arizona

Her ex-Taliban husband Habibullah

Assists

~

Young enchantress Mamoodia

The other Sufi archer of Pluckame

Patrols

Her bow vibrant & arrows a quiver

~

Life in a Sufi bubble

Has it’s ups & downs

But mostly it floats

Miracles often occur

~

Sheena becomes so angelic

She sprouts wings

Every curve of her body

Softens

~

And Habibullah swears

He’s

Gone

To heaven 

~

episode 40

Ants

~

Thousands of ants

Tumble across the raggedy ground

At the feet of Col. Sheena Johnson

& her faithful hubby Habibullah

~

The couple sit cross-legged honing arrowheads of Sufi bliss

In front of the commander’s imported Native American teepee

“I’ve never seen a horde of ants like this,” says ex-Talib Habibullah

“I wonder where they are going?”

~

Elder Haji Mujadooti having trudged up the mountain-ridge trail

Stands out of breath amidst the horde of ants, tries to say something

He slaps his pants frantically, falls down, rolls around spastically

Thus disrupting the peaceful scene with idiotic old-man antics

~

Covered head to toe with angry biting ants

He heroically stands up & despite the pain he is suffering

Says to Habibulla’s infidel wife,  “Do something, Sheena!

Our courageous Afghan soldiers are dying below!”

~

Ahhh!

The commander knows Afghanistan

She knows Taliban & she knows ants too

She arises

~

The empress of the Afghaneeland village of Pluckame

Pulls Haji Mujadooti out of the jam in which he stands

“Darling husband, please tend to this poor wise man”

Habibullah smiles, arises & does as bidden

~

Barefoot, Sheena steps into the rapidly moving horde of angry ants

Not one lousy insect crawls onto one toe of the formidable goddess

She stands erect as the Rock of Gibraltar & prays to St. Joan of Arizona

Who in a distant land relays the message to heaven

~

And by God, Sheena’s Sufi bow materializes in her held out hand

Sufi armor crackles sparsely here & there on her outrageously perfect body

She picks up a freshly cut & carved & honed world-peace arrow

Fits it to the bow string, aims, shuts her eyes, let’s it go

~

The cosmic forces of the universe gather upon the arrowhead point

Thrust forward into the oblivion of every Taliban brain below

Capt’n Chuck Fiddler’s Afghaneeland Sufi Bubble

& divine revelations explode!!! 

~

Suddenly beyond anybody’s wildest expectation

There are no more Taliban in the tumultuous nation of Afghanistan

The insurgents have transformed into the silliest looking little ants ever seen

All carrying rifles tinier than toothpicks

~

Pvt. Ghani Gandhara gut-shot and breathing his last breath

Picks up one of these purple insects on the end of his thumb & smiles

The Afghan National Army shall prevail at least in Rawclyde's imaginary

Pvt. Gandhara leaps beyond the veil 

~

Pop!

~

entire text

Copyright Clyde Collins 2015

~

photo

Pocahontas as Mamoodia

~

Afghaneeland

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