THE OTHER POEM

This is not the poem about the glories

of battle, the courage on the battlefield,

the beauty in loss and the nobility of death.

No, this is not that poem.

And this is not the poem about returning

soldiers and laughing families and special

deals at the restaurants for veterans.

This is not the poem in praise of

drugs that get us through the night,

nights that strain toward daylight,

the letters from the fields,

the letters from the field hospitals,

the photos of seven guys and a girl

on a tank smiling for the camera,

smiling their sweet lives away

on top of a fucking tank.

No, this is not that poem.

It is not the poem

that clarifies, beatifies, lionizes.

Thirty days or ten years,

of going away and coming back

have made fighting no clearer to me now

than it ever was.

Birds of prey see us as

weak and foolish. They cannot

love such stupid beings

but they can scan the

bare dirt of wartime and eat

from what lies there.

This is not the poem

that has blocked egregious

combat from our real lives.

(I wish that nice poem was here now

to come all this way with me.

Life has been so much more

serious than that poem was.)

You see, I hate it.

Every battle, every death,

every mutilation, every POW,

every lonely wife, sister, parent, husband

waiting in line for good news.

I hate the vision and the circumstances,

the hope, the foolishness, the ravage.

Well, what to say now…? All I

can do is look up at you and admit

that I’ve lied. You have guessed it,

haven’t you, that this is, absolutely,

that poem?

TENTANS VESTIUM¹

I remember the St. Jude novenas best:

kneeling between Kate and Trish,

my aunt at the end of the line

each of us begging the mal-named saint

for our hearts’ desires—more than

we deserved, we told ourselves, and less than we

really wanted. Our tumultuous requests

nudged each other on their ascension. As I

recall, nothing changed much.

I know we liked thinking it might.

I worship everything now, meditate in

front of everything, everyone: my psychotic

tonguings include the western saints, the colorful

Hindu Gods and Goddesses, the Buddhist guides

and guidesses. I say the prayers of Baha'i and

the prayers of Mohammad. Nothing has changed much.

I still say the novenas—like the St. Jude one best.

But, later,

off my knees and over a glass of wine, I

run the words over in my mind as if they existed

on a ribbon. They race past like canal water

and I say them/hear them in the middle of

my ears. I sip, ask myself, Can

Om Shivaya Namaha² do what

Sancte Jude, spes desperatorum,

ora pro me³ cannot?

¹To try on clothing

²I bow to Shiva

³St. Jude, hope of the hopeless, pray for me

AFTERLIGHT BLUES

All things wait out

the endless dreams

of the afternoon nap.

Phantoms make their visits

and the day climbs up

into the dark with caution.

Sunset’s outburst

never fails us.

A blast of light

and then the sinking

of that same light.

Fear rests in the teeth

and glands and bones

of our olivewood skeletons.

Before you know it,

the moon will have

forgotten the entire event.