After the Vietnams and the Me Leis

After the Vietnams and the Me Leis Steel skull Stone eye Blooming jungle rot Itching on the crotch Jack scratches the trigger of his M14 Kisses the golden egg And throws like the Babe. Jack is now back from hell and trying to cope In fourteen breathing, and moving pieces Held with a pound of steel and ounces of hope. Sitting a seat apart from me on the redeye flight When all was quiet and both of us were tight He was heading back to hell after a brief home stay I asked him why do soldiers fight, and die It’s such a lost cause, such a waste of life. “You don’t do it for your country or for freedom Or for that crap they howl about on TV. You do it for your buddies,” Jack said. “They offed three of us out of twelve.” He looked out the window into the hidden fears, “We got them good,” he said, “We got nine ears,” And didn’t glance at me; no cheers for the loot, no jeers. That’s the mathematics of war, the logic of the battle Figured out on an Ohio porch, some California night With Arizona heat sprouting cactus thorns for guilty souls. Some rickets-ridden urchin Lurching behind a bush Probably ahead of a burly Charlie Around and around in the mind One muddy foot One G. I. boot Lordy-fordy, how devious and sly – This Charlie pair has to die. So, Jack kisses the butt of his rifle Tickles the crack of his grenade And down goes the child Down by the bush only the child Crafting nightmare and despair On every porch of this land of care. Jack is on his thousandth retake: Tries to miss, inserts distraction with a hiss Tries on glasses with bulbous lenses Fingers flat, fat, knobby and arthritic That clumsy little rat Not too good at bat Everything you can do to derail That fatal launch of death and fail But there is no escape going back. Jack didn’t aim just to maim He aimed to kill and blood to spill But he did miscalculate, and can’t undo what is done. Back then he scuttled around the fated bush for ears And now, walks back and forth in the backyard Shedds tears for his wrongs and dodging fears. For a while, the radios clarion lyndons Nixon away despair with a blare: “My fallow Amuricans . . .” He is tired but hides his horror for the here and now “I want to make this absolutely point . . .” All night Jack listens to disoriented roosters crow Tries to unglue shirt from sweaty skin On the prowl for Constitutional comfort for Me Lei A clause, or some amendment that justifies the way, The basic facts of blood multiplication in the U.S.A. Ah, but there hasn’t been a blessed massacre yet Nothing like that was ever justified for any threat And let us pray that it never will. We must not forget.