I have read of war
all my life. I want it bad,
the dread and the joy,
the skill and the chance,
no rules on the battle line
of some weirding strife,
except I know what
I truly am not, never
could really ever
be if in their time
or in my own.
It's ticking,
the pin pulled, spoon flipped
and smoke leaking out.
Fire in the friggen hole I
holler running past
the perimeter.
The bang of it slaps at me.
Then the clouds roiling
tell their own story.
I will not go back to check
the splay of the dead.
September 6, 2013 9:34 PM
Spectacular at least, but a deeply disturbing poem.
ReplyDeleteI have been reading "The 13th Valley", an extremely well written classic squad level Viet Nam novel. In it, one thing that happens, the soldiers attempt to philosophically adjust to their war while they rest up between patrols into enemy zones of control. One of the soldiers, so new he has earned the nickname Cherry, but who has already killed and survived in the fire of combat, considers war a natural function of the human limbic brain and so impossible to excise from human society no matter how we twist and turn trying to avoid it. There are just too many people who truly love war and are willing to admit and act on that.
DeleteI suppose that there are too many people who frankly love war for whatever reason is actually deeply disturbing. More disturbing is to frankly realise that I am one of them myself. Even worse, I realize that I am far too timid to act on my love unless embedded in some kind of killing machine that extends my reach and gives me the illusion of invulnerability. I suspect my demand for protection is basically universal and is the principle driving force of war technology. Of course, war tech. is a key source of innovations in the larger technologies of first world culture, if not THE key source.
DeleteTo add shame on top of shame, I was overtly anti-war in the mid and late 60s but this in reaction to my personal confusions, not from some clean place of certainty.
DeleteThere is much to think about in your responses to my comment. Thank you for being so frank. I must confess that I have never been anti-war on principle, but neither have I ever been pro-war except when I have felt, rightly or wrongly, that there was no other realistic, acceptable choice. Whether I would continue in that state of mind if conditions changed drastically is quite another matter.
ReplyDelete