Man with a Bomb

This poem is by longtime San Antonio resident and attorney Jim Heidelberg, the elder brother of poet Paul Heidelberg. In the spirit of Spanish poet brothers Antonio and Manuel Machado and Bulgarian poet brothers Konstantin and Dimitar Miladinov, here are poems by the American poet brothers Jim and Paul Heidelberg.


Man with a Bomb


For weeks many sought to uncover the secrets
of the unknown man,
now only pieced together
for an unwitting pauper’s funeral, not knowing of the
strange abduction that occurred during the lunch hour
of August 17,2004, outside of town, in a rundown
series of grain silos, where the twain of life’s agonies converged
in a conspiracy of joy and heartbreak.
The note in his hand ordered him to the First National bank
where he presented the oddly worded document
to a young teller. “I am here to rob this bank and I
Have a bomb attached to my chest,” he read, in
an erringly quiet and straightforward manner.
Some thought he was the milkman who came every day
to deposit the fulls and remove the empties, so
it was strange to see him wearing a bomb.
A bomb locked by a computer.
The unknown man only became known when the
bomb placed over his heart never heard the message
from afar to stand down and caused the bomb to destroy
the man exploding its awful fury, seen by all onlookers who
universally turned away; but one, whose left eye saw the carnage,
knew the secret of the bomb and the unknown man.
The unknown man delivered the milk every day for
thirty-one years; everyone called him the little milkman,
one with no name, only a simple label of occupation.
It was true, no one knew Albert Sydney Smith until his
diary was found in the boxes stashed under the bed
in his little bungalow. Albert’s diary dated all of the days
of the thirty-one years, describing his days delivering the milk
from house to house. The full world was there, the colors
of the leaves, the height of the grass, the changing colors of the
painted walls, the children as they grew, each day, each year he described
those that wed, those that moved, those that divorced, those
that died, recorded every day for thirty-one years.
The whole town was in the book, everyone’s name, age
comings and goings, upsets and joys, acts of kindness,
sins of flesh in the mid-afternoons, during the late nights, all recorded.
The police took the diary, read the first year of the thirty-one years,
it took a day and a half, everyone in the town in 1973 came back
by Albert’s notes, jumping from the page in descriptions of jackets,
pants, dresses, shoes, cars, hair colors, parts and waves,
all taken in by the unknown milkman.
Albert knew everyone, even their thoughts, but no one knew Albert,
the unknown milkman, the one whose bizarre death became
a nationwide news story, even an article in the New Yorker,
describing the milkman’s bomb, describing his cries for help,
describing the need to stop the ticking, to keep him alive.
No one really believed Albert, never believed a bomb was there
they looked him in the eye and told him to calm down, to
take a drink of water, as the clock ticked on for Albert.
Everyone thought the milkman had gone crazy, the crazy milkman,
thinking that a bomb was on his heart, they didn’t remember
all the milk, every day, for thirty-one years, didn’t remember
the name of the milkman, the crazy milkman.
Who was the man with the left eye open? Seeing the ticking bomb,
seeing the frenzied crowd of onlookers.
It was a reflection of Albert’s eye shining off a car window,
looking back into Albert’s soul as he left.
Albert Sydney Smith now known, and feared, for Albert’s
will had been found in the locked box under the bed.
A special codicil to his will left a bequest of the diary to
the town newspaper, including a cash gift to cover the costs
of printing Albert’s entire diary in serialized form,
with the proviso that in each edition the byline would be
“Diary of Albert Sydney Smith, formerly known as the Milkman”

Jim Heidelberg