Why We Fight:
 or act at the idea of fighting, puffed like rooster’s with metal claws

I

Third grade held
Punches in the nose
Of big bully, hero

For drawing blood
First. Fourth grade
Things did boomerang

May I see the errors of my ways
Was lesson here when too soon

Hands are initiated in bloodletting

But I knew then
When Johnny fell
Over the white
Miniature picket

That power was ugly
That I was ugly in power

That this single second of a 8 yr old solution
Would loop back, boomerang back, karmic f***

Me in the ear one day
When that urge to know
Meant signing away soul
In favor of a glorious inferno
Sniper firing rounds at my head
run from them who want your head

On a platter like john’s must have looked

You have bought in too

I want to save you from my brethren wild with
savage souls bent with corrupt device sublime.

Back then when I stooped
To offer my hand to the one

I had bloodied, I was shocked
He accepted my shaking plea.
 
I wanted to think
You would see me dead and cry
Later under the cover of moonless

Desert night, having seen my eyes.

II

Schultz was tough
Shot a whole platoon
Of deadly RG Troops
With a 60 cal. Marlboro
Sticking out a’ his mouth
Screaming fuck me out the side
Like Rambo on Kentucky swill
Seeing only her, one home, and

hoped

While mowing down
Iraqi’s that I suspect

Wanted

Nothing but a bit of
 feed and be freed
of the bunkered
 prisons of forcedtofight

with no food in a sandy sea, foolish enough to
See hope in a field of green men and mad Shultzee.

I fought him behind the tent at his request. Very courtly, like a southern gentleman he asked me out back as if for a dance, and he wanted me to know what I already knew from basic when I saw him punch the Sr. Drill behind the bleachers, and he offered his hand to him, the drill Sgt, bloodied and peering around to see if his cowardice would be caught, accepted his hand.
He was oddly worldly. He was me
on the other side of thirty burning
 for some solution in a shitpotsituation
life that holds up high hands

                                                                                                           Bloodied
and that me of thirty
Bottled and fermented
Was his same burning
For heart he had lost
Whilst mowing down                                                                          Iraqis
For hopes of home
Erased by hands
Banished Red
and wanting.
Relief was warring
With Restraint to strain
Out some the sickness
Onto desert sand’s fine
dust  dance floor scrapping
With a mad man--
Loving his scars
With balled fists.

III

McCully, Fisher,
Hagen, Moore, Hester,
 Mac, Lindsey, Red, Brooklyn, Shultzee,
that crazy guy from Kentucky,

All gone from                                                          memory.
I have no pictures
 left but
that one of
Kathy holding                                             me.

And the Philly homecoming, but none of the group,
 
the faces I cared so much to see when I                     returned

Stateside slipped away from sight like                       forgetting

During a commercial what-the-fuck your                  watching.

A Warrior’s aftermathfearofdeath                             mentality
Is one defined by                                                      commodity:

We have bought in
And paid with mendacity
about the reasons
We have opened the boxed inequity

Unleashed contrast upon                    our-children-souls
For glory
For country
For pussy                                               for that need
They unlock and toss                        the                      key

The killing clenching killer inside our                               fear of seeing
That we are the hollow men mired in                                morbid curiosity.

IV

We contain
We contact
We Dustoff

We  Sweep
We Spot instead of see.

They hide
They snarl

They  smell
 like their camels’ balls.

I punched a camel
                            In the lip
For spitting hatred
                                      At us green
Men and all                                                  camel murderers
                                     Everywhere.
Shot in the
head for boredom
And a                            sharpening of                                 spiked gung-ho
                        Heads in an                                                insignificant wheel
                          Made to spin                                   incessantly,
for blessed                                                                 perpetual insanity
machine.                                                                       I hurt my hand.

Eleven bodies                                                  without heads

Line the nowhere                                                     street diesel
            Sprayed                      track for                                              gearheadme
To hope moving                                                      HMMV’s fly

Away to let us                                             replace horror with
Busstop                                                            movieextras

Eleven at                      the                                                                     afternoon station,
                                                                      off work early

                                                                    And                  headed                       
                                                            Home.

V

Those that leave
The fighting for others

Those that leave
When fighting starts

This is punishable
By mega-bucks and

Several Terms in office.

And we must stay
And we must wait                      on the hills
Of life guarding air and sand
Like gold, and we

Stay on guard after its over
And that addiction or that obsession
Is us saying: I want to go home, now,
I have had enough midnight

Duty. Can’t I go Home, Please.

Automatic weapon remembrances
Set the pace of weary hearts--
Replaces the low human thud with
Rat tat tat, three round bursts save
Ammo, Rat tat tat, Rat tat tat. All
Is madness in the sound of air bent
By bullets. We have felt bullets and
Casings buzz with kinetic fire-lust
Before the trigger is pulled and we
Are inevitably pulled in to that lust
Once we are the trigger, we the fire
We the target, we the one universal
Soldier dying every day, and killing.

I am all of them, as they are me. We
Are a great and silent sea of homesick
Refugees from the horrific and ecstatic.

We march into oblivion just to watch
Our bodies burn.  We burn together
In the oiled kitchen of a sick system.
We march into the fire like Cathars--
Calling cadence to our mega-souled
Body, the universal soldier’s sacrifice

For all the rest’s sins. Martyrs mundane.

VI

Grandfather fought in Two
Me in the 1st War in Iraq
(will my son be in the 2nd)

Uncle Mark almost went
My Dad missed both wars
Like thread thru needle hole
Of experience, just to see son

Go.

I want this heritage to suicide
Itself against its sharp practice
Of its toothy war machine chant--

For it is made of language crippled
By violent intent, such is the way
Of human mistakes of semantics
Made holy or royal, made too real,
Sharpened on human bone & blood

Mortality making it spin;
Fear making it speed through thickest skin;
Illusions banned for clear sight and logical

Paths

That all lead to the slaughter house--
That is time’s shitty outhouse.

All

In war is excrement. And I am peanut

Passed

Through the system’s intestinal grinder
Unchanged  in general form but smaller
And covered with stink and knowledge.

Over

There is my soul, with boys green
Hoping a few nuts survive to join
My ranks in opposition to our soul
Killer leaders that lie so we will die
To keep this motor moving, greased,

Oil-

ed

VII

Have a nice day
I thought it odd she would say
This to me when

Leaving the plane
That took me to odd aired heat
And powder sand

Suffocation that said Death

Is around the corner.

Air Hawaii took us
USAIR brought some
Back whole, most changed.
Flight attendant in navy and white
Addressed me when first

back stateside in Bangor.
She said be safe you hear
As if this was some voice
Of god or some other
Deception. To be safe
When you soul has been

Trained to madness.

How? Will all automatic language
Knee jerk phrasing die with the last

To die of complacency.
Of tongue and pen.                  Weak men

Playing cards in 1st class
With green lives’ rent.

Brave women & men
Rendered huddled and                      holy
Cows for axe and blade                    lust habit.
I want blood
                                                        I see red
I or he or she am/is dead:
This is the only true
Soldier fear   :   to be
Near to the heart of why
We live and die for numbers on a board
And board and unboard planes and other
movable machines to be heckled by semantically loose slaves that get to stay put while others fight for a point raise in the airline stock. I must not hear the sound of planes when I type, or else want word for plane to be erased from mind. I will fly no more with them calling after me things ridiculous, lingering.

VIII

I drew razor wire
Crowns for lords

Of war made myth
To pass the buck.

If they, these proud
Memories fought

On shores of seas
Made red in ideology,

So should we. See
How they remember

See how they see
The hero in parade

Sparkling. I spot him
Rot under those medals

To have been so p-inned and labeled.

He is only your dream of
Perfected tragedy, watered
Down utopian stupidity
Sold to you for free, fired
In the furnace of need
This crimson deed is wooded
With words made slave
To the stale spent soldierbreath
that poisons the air of time.
With my mind’saftermathrevelations

And mad rhymes for the lost to speak
In the grand halls of Hades, I will live

With the quick and dead and 
medaled mountains made to walk or ride
                                                                        In another war‘s
                                                                                                          Parade.
                 Commercials   for   the American Way

                  Line                       the rows of Arlington Cemetery
In White    perfect
Formation.                               The green grounds bleed for only
One memory.                                Memory dinosaur mean.

IX

For the last time
I don’t want to die…

Yesyoudo,that’sjustsilly!

…for my country or
the holy see.

Ofcourseyoudo,now,don’t we?

For the times I lost it
I was sorry….

Andwhyshouldn’tyoube?

You are not getting
what I mean…

Aren’tyouexageratingyourworth?

That I see your voice
In my need…

CrazytalkgetthenetsoldierhereisSection*8,orjustalazypinkoyippyfreaktolockupwithHoffman‘sGhost!

To kill your words with
Speed and cunning

Reduce you to a mumbled
Pause introduction

To the true voice of me
In this soldiers creed:          I will outlive this monstrosity.

X

The Map hung in my postwar childhood Room

With medal and patch Old Iron-
Sides and yellow ribbon pinned

To its topography in corners

Blank of sand

                        Blank of sea

No penned in movements
Of imaginary marching feet

Nothing but the pain of 90 degreed Iraqi coffee stained paper peaked endings.
Singular corners of someone’spositionpurpose holding tack holes will mutilate.

I already have trashed
The patch into memories-boxes
That line Mom’s basement wall.

The ribbon is somewhere hiding

In ocean of yellow bows still waiting.
The medal stays glued to green pride

Perked up to attention
On my feet
by bugle sound of revelry
on my holy TV:

When they play taps I cry
            That it is not played for me.

I have sold my childhood memories
For needed repairs on this relic map

That had hands and eyes for play things
That had hand in building my necessity
To bring filling stuff to holes made deep

In cornered ends so riddled with display.
Hard corners won‘t hold it up on my wall ever again.

XI

I have mapped rivers
between homes and leaving
nonlinear lines
Across America again.
When will you call sweet

Wind of change
                             To make flighted

These feet.  I am Mercury, Damn it!:
                                                                  I am winged to run rings round
Sun and its heated scenery
of nuclear white desert.
I need sand that is not
at beaches, blasted blurry baby.

I need dry
I need bullets flying
I need Phoenix?

Perhaps I could join a rag tag team
Of some sort. Or a streetfightingang

For overeducated suckers
that get savvy after thirty
That we don’t really need to organize
Take up invisible arms against every single
               Invisible enemy of
Church and State and everyone
that says something we hate or

Has a fear that shows us
our own face.
My street cred will be gargantuan
They will call me JanusMitochodrialChrist
JaMC for short, and I will be mythic and erect.
I am not mercury, or this cosmic thug of
Comic contrasts. I was at just there at a loss
For words, again. I wanted to say profit is wrong,
Even in our own empty endeavors;
our ego‘s home in progress--
That dream
They say
Is sweet,
Ain’t                                                      
no
Solution.                                                                                  I wanted to say STOP!

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