While we shuffle out the blast
We shovel out the last
Our ashes the swine of the faeces in the kerosene burns
We shit upon plywood 8-holers in conexes
The snipers like clouds of angry gnats.
Look in the burn-barrel my friends
For as I wander, you will find us there
For have we shat our hearts
And any pat-a-puppy-on-the-head fell
2 inches flat
Into our soldier souls turned to chicken scat
but would that we could
kick out a turd at the squat
but the food’s too bindery and well,
it’s just too fucking hot
Hands that would hold are lost in the smoke
Lips that would kiss have dried, swoll and broke
Feet that would jump for joy
a either-girl any-boy
remain tarmac-flat
Fingers that would a-run through glory blonder
are a-pocketed like the steward’s stare
there are pockets that serve as lockets
there are socks that serve as box
there are belts that cinch and give not an inch
and this or those are only fatigues
from 2 nights full of insolent dreams
where air pumps wheeze
we die not by shot but by degrees
while the owners play their cards and
smoke their pall malls
left to only you and I to clench fists around dog tags
and we are ashes one-to-one,
from the burn-barrel and
the barbecue
dogs and boys all gone to die
to ring around the rosie
to pocket anthraxed posies
to all fall down
to all fall down
their ribs rest among ashes
and ever alert for flashes
for applications of force
for ventilations for training.
for exculpations
at the kiddie pool
the slip, the slide
the everything like a rock inside
he is a walking geode
his is a stride gone too wide for the walk this side
there are prime cuts to look inside
a table to be set and spirits with blood yet left to be let
“oh look here comes the letting”
moments too soon too near
a dog sleeping unto death under the air conditioner vent
as if
as if
he the elephant
while they are playing cards and trumps and tricks
while coals and sun do reasonably set
all this within a fence or two
all this within a conex, a conex built for two
while in the heat human voices wake us and we drown
and the wars they are all deserts
it is a sechedor, there sir, in the door, knock yourself out
a half-empty, rather half-full bottle and a fully prepaid whore
go now,
go now,
before come ashes those cooling coals
go west young man
go forward my son
and, well, knock yourself out
as likely a sleep while snake in tree
snake says lisping
while pretty trees are a-glow with asps
those skills are perishable
you weaken by the day of their not applied
“Charlie really does get stronger every day in the bush
every day in the crouching jungle
(http://www.vietvet.org/palmer.htm)
(http://books.google.com/books?id=gonqgwEsFZ8C&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=crouching+jungle+poem+eliot&source=bl&ots=Api1zhGaSC&sig=YaecEHY3Ph98eW2l2DKwgt4HWgk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MKopUOa6JOf_ygHi8IGQAw&ved=0CE4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=eliot&f=false)
the humpings gone
unnoticed but spat upon nonetheless
“yours is no disgrace”
to lie with dogs dead as logs
in summer skies with lightning
like the fingers of the cancer
bone-broke and slip-wrench cut
to sleep perchance to die
between the bottle-ass brothels, the
gap-tooth chatty whores
where winter rangers with their winter black fingers
a-split like my sleeping soldier’s lips
the salt trails up & down his back
the blood into his boots
the “fuck, this pressure’s a heart attack.”
and these are the intersecting planes
the khyber pass
the port of prince
the family straits
and texas, nineteen-seventy-nine.