After The War II

AFTER THE WAR II 040627

We sat with
sullen looks
vacuous in the dull heat, we
had cultivated the
thousand yard stare, men
in bars
shrank from us when we
looked them in the eye but
before that, before we got back
to there

before that we
sat on a low green hill our
balls were crusty with
sweat and dirt our
intimates cemented to us, our
torn motley
sweating and thriving with insect life we were
too far gone to
salute Westmoreland’s whimsies, we were
those guys from
Going After Caccio, Millar

squatted

VC-like and
rocked
rocked back and forth
eyes of a dullard while
Jones kept tipping his pack
out into the dried mud and
counting everything he
mumbled over and over
entrenching tool, Man’s, one, towel
olive drab, Man’s, one, poncho
shit-colored, Man’s one, Estavez
lay still
his boonie hat
eye-shading his
disdain
was legend I
didn’t even try to rah rah him, Morakow
I had known a Captain Morakow once in
naval intelligence, by the beat and bleat of his
RADOPS key, coming over the ether on
New Year’s Eve
Soviet trawler-style we
moved the red pin for his vessel a little
to the left, but now
in another theater naval
intelligence had
become navel-gazing we
were tired, tired
of it all and didn’t care a fig
about LBJ, we had
Canadians and Brits, kiwis
and strines and
the odd scattered others from
places I can’t remember they got
a green card that way we

loved and hated the rich green land and the
lovely women, the
women who would kill us even as
they kid-gloved each thrust with their
girlish tightness, we
knew that self immolation was a big
fad down in the villes, I

remember Radwanski that
Polish prick
flared out on final thrusting
all the way through to China and she
red-misted him, there was
nothing left to shoot and the elders

eyeballed us with
dull hate, dull
hate, there were

times we tried to reason . . . “Hey!

It’s not us we’re
only the messengers, we’re
victims too they
nodded
agreeably and
later eyeballed us, eyeballed us with
dull hate, we

we moved on we
ALWAYS moved on and
nothing changed, nothing
was different each day’s longing
longer than the last, the last on which
we were beaten
down to planchets, the last

that forged us, forged us
into different beings
unrecognizeable we could no longer
look our mothers in the eye we
glanced down against the hot thrust of
our mothers’ love back
home we
locked ourselves in our rooms back home until
the semen-haze
caused our mothers to reel back and gasp for air and
wonder, locked
ourselves in our rooms till the
whiskey smell
made them sob, “I
just don’t know what to do,” said one
collapsing to her knees her

mother-loving arms clutching
clutching her son who
pushed her away, pushed
her away with curled lip and
turned over to sleep

turned over
away from her
leaving her sobbing and then

we went out to vote

-30-

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