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.
Copyright © Apostolos Kizilos | Year Posted 2015
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