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Bastogne 1944
It was cold, so cold because they hadn’t given
 us warm clothes for the  winter, or to die in:
Germans and SS surrounded us and
 the aroma of their hot food and Heil Hitler!
warm fur coats drifted by us 

 as the freezer closed in, my Thompson was
 a cold block of ash and black metal but
 working well, so well, so very well 
and the  drum magazine (music to my ears )had
 a hundred rounds  and I started  naming each

 bullet Fritz, or Franz, or Helmut, or Adolf
then  stopped at eight when I ran out of names
and when they attacked we took them away,
 from their mothers and lovers and their pastors
 and brothers, made widows of their wives and 
 whores of their sisters

 but all this was a long time ago and I remember 
the cold and the wind  as they charged at us screaming  
“ AAAGGGHH!”  which sounds the same in Hindi or 

 Belgian or Yiddish or Scottish, as their warm chests exploded 
and bearded faces imploded and their meat and their teeth
 spread like confetti in the loud Thompson  flashes ,
 (like a party strobe)
which was kind of unsettling to see them die like men
 for what they believed in: 

and the SS came out and shot  all the wounded so they 
danced like  devils  to the tune of my Thompson gun
 (oh what fun) 

we caught one  in braces with Lieber standarte  
sewn on his arm  and we kicked him in rage and in pain
 then spat in his eye, until the Captain said,
” information!...enough, we don’t want him to die!”
and the SS man let out a sigh as long as the sky

then the morning came and I blew up my nose and blew up a tank 
then collected the dog tags from the blood soaked soil 
(watches from their dead and a dagger or two)

then it hit me, the cold, like a spike in the dawn,
so I put on a German coat of leather and fur
not caring if the owner was dead or alive, 
(I had become a monster)

but now I’m old with hands  of paper and veins,
 when it’s warm in the womb of my den, I hold
 the things, I filched from the dead and remember 
 the flash of the warm Thompson gun:
and I’m cold inside ( will it ever be gone?)
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