Late
I came to this poetry
business
in my 50's
and after having given up
writing
for two years--
and unsure why
not prose, but
but determined
to get something down
or to die
trying,
and
I am still at it
still trying
and dying too
but not
dead
yet.
1918
they brought us up in the
40 and 8's and
we got out and marched
three abreast
through countryside untouched
by the war. Red poppies bloomed in the
green fields--a lovely sight
Campbell on my right side
Stanley left of me, agreed.
The guns became deafening as
we approached the ridge: they hit
us with 77's, 105's, wizzbangs, and
ashcans--and blew to hell the bloody ridge.
A shell took off poor Stanley's leg.
(A one-oh-five, Campbell said.)
Blood from the stump, poppy-red.
In the first lull the prick of a General ordered us
up and
forward into No Man's Land, the
Maxim guns sounding like typewriters writing the
story of our end, but on we
ran, toward destiny and death
for la glorie and la patrie
and for the profit margin of the shits' in the rear--
those new millionaires
who made a killing in the war.
Nightlight Days
I was left too long
alone
she said, my girlfriend
in my crib
upstairs in the home
with dust motes
and heraldic pattern of a gray
floor rug--
a shaft of sunlight on varnished wood
a closet where the bogeyman
lived; window casings that rattled
in the wind, and
muslin curtains that flew up
like ghostly arms in a storm--
the attic overhead where
the dead walked on creaking boards...
My brother, in his crib
on the far side of the moon: his
crybaby cries brought the
overhead light, like a sun
and Grandma; her
stuttering orthopedic shoes, and
golden crucifix around her neck.
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