Memorial Days
The local girls are Asian, South Korean, Japanese,
Chinese, Vietnamese.
A few runaway Muslim chicks.
War is a man-shaped demon.
War is booze and guns, fistfights,
Humvees and frying, flying limbs.
What's a young man to do?
He does it, then lives to die later.
Madam Butterfly has a missile launcher.
Flower-drum songs and whistling bombs,
'agent orange' sing-alongs.
It’s all an edge of the grave rave.
Rosie the riveter has got herself a flamethrower.
Napalm blooms in the garden of sin.
What's a young man to do
to save you?
If he makes it, if he comes through,
treat him gently
while he holds his head and screams
or more likely, he goes quiet
way too quiet.
then he just might be the next explosion
in your new foxhole.
Local girls go and come home also,
she that stayed,
her long tour of duty has just begun.
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