Reunions: #28 Jack Kovac

Reunions: #28 Jack Kovac
 
Kovac, our star quarterback
All sinew and gristle was our Jack
Great for High School football
For the Pro's too small
He shattered our records all

A Yellow School bus took us all a singing
Friends together that September morning
Comrades in arms down to White Hall Street
The physicals there to meet or beat
To be certified into Uncle Sam's Army
or refused for some blarney

Andy, God rest his soul, gave a shout,
" I'm trying to pop my hemorrhoids out"
"I'll beat the draft" and he did
when they popped and were not hid
But Andy died a few years later, I must sigh
We never did know where or why
But I suspect he shot himself dead
Suicides are rarely publicly read

Johan asked me to piss in a cup
 he wanted to go to Vietnam
 but his drug use would slam
Some boys thought it would be a lark
Saving  South Vietnam, a romp in the park
No thought of commie thugs in leaky saipans
Or back street bars for die'an

They reported Jack missing nine months in
We'd wondered what became of him
Three officers of the local board
Called upon his widowed mother Maud
An English woman fair with grey-blond hair
Said Jackey boy shouldn't have gone there

Those of us who'd escaped conscription's call
Rallied to the graveyard all
In suits and ties and shapely hats
To say goodbye to our dear Jack
I'd escaped the call by happenstance
A gay medic had taken a fancy
And failed to write my blood pressure down
 in cursive figures bold and round
Without those numbers  Unk Sam had to wait
In those three months I made a new date
won admission to  Pre-med that bared conscription
Rendered mute the board's decision
We laughed that my ass was saved by a gay
as we carried Jack's coffin away
And planted him in our town's grey earth
Our only boy of such great worth

It took some years to learn the truth
That sticks inside my hollow tooth
that Jack did not fall on a war torn plain
Fighting while he was blood stained
Instead he fell murdered in the back of a bar
Where Saigon strippers bare it all
Launching ping-pong balls like rockets
From their vagina's sockets

Out where the piss latrines stink of beer
There still on his knees found Jack our dear
With a needle in his arm and fresh semen in his mouth
His body frozen and stiff as ice
A bullet hole besides his ear marked entry
Erased his fear
Shattered his skull and optic orbit neat

Who blew his head apart after such a tasty treat?
And left him there still kneeling on his feet
Was it an enraged homophobe,
some redneck sergeant's fling?
If it was a robbery?
Why'd they leave his high school ring?
What happened during his jaw's embrace?
That destroyed our Jacky boy's lovely face

We never knew and never will
Know the facts of Jacky's death
And we‘ve remained mute and perplexed
Robbed of glory or a tale of his valor
Like his 80 yard run for the championship
In the last quarter of the last game he ripped
When we still felt we might conquer life
love and sex with just one wife

We graduated in June
some went off to college, some did not
Time passed quickly till that rifle shot
That rang sharp staccato out in Dallas
Robbing us of his aristocratic drawl
Though not all loved--morned by all
We watched in silence
Kennedy's horse drawn casket's long trot
Down Pennsylvania Avenue's lot
Truly an element of fantasy
But Jack Kovac's death was real to me
Coming three years before to the day
Oswald took our other Jack away

At my age, memory can plays tricks
Faces and places merge in flicks
And Jack takes on a new familiar face
But still one destroyed by a bullet's grace

One last word,
I never thought Kovac was gay
Not a sign of a limp wrist or fem glance
But war often makes men turn that way
Makes their inner nature come out
When pain and agony is hard to shout
Men seek solace in what some call vice
What some other men think is nice
When life is tasteless,
a cock can be like ice cream
–cool, fresh, full of flavor

Oh Jacky boy, football wasn't the only ball you hankered
You made a joke out of rubbing the hiker's ass
We let it pass, you were our winner
You still are
And those of us who have tasted cock
Know it has a special lock
That ties us to our fellow man
As no embrace or back slap can
You don't have to be a raging fag
To know the taste on which some gag
And in truth we still don't know
Why Jack died or who he blowed

On the stone his Mom erected
Simple words without invection
 adjectives or flowery speech
"Here lies our boy, our hope, our joy erased..."
 
Perhaps I'll meet Jack in the far beyond
He'll tell me what happened and why he's gone
But who believes in Fairies, Elves and Heaven
Not I, so it will remain a mystery
We kept it secret for none to see
For each of us have secrets bold
And there is no reason all must be told
As in the last words on his tomb's face
"...Lost in war's embrace"

I walk down to the old graveyard
With a grey pit pup I call Jack
We sit a while on a bench near his tomb
I tell him things but he never answers
I rub his ear and he smiles wide eyed with innocence
And licks the tear that runs down my cheek