Roomers of Wars
Opening
Cheap bars sell razor blades
so I bought a pack
and sawed at my wrists a little
in the men's room
and tried to look as if I were dying
of some red victory
in front of the urinal.
Some guy who came in
to relieve himself
went and told the bartender
there's a soldier
in the men's room
with his wrists cut
but not too badly
so they left me there
like a dripping mop
and started talking
about something else
which you understand was
was not what I expected.
After a while I got up
and like a cat who hurts its paw
swiping at a bug
I slunk from the bar
as nonchalantly as I could
That was a long time ago
and they were little cuts, I guess,
but my wrists still show the scars
and it's only sinking in now
how dull death really is.
Jul 1982
War Story
That distant war was in its final year.
We labored in the bloated island sun
to get a ward for wounded sailors done,
the air too think, the sweating sky too near.
An engine roared and all of us could see
each time the fighter pilot made a run
and practiced his maneuvers one by one,
diving, rising, twisting to get
free.
A loud descent began.
Then something failed.
I said out loud, that guy is going to crash.
The plane, so close I saw the pilot's eye,
was stopped by earth. The engine parts impaled
the flying man.
We saw his body splash.
It was, I thought, a messy way to die.
Dec 1978, Jan, Feb, Mar 1979
Letter Fragment (World War II)
He used his skull. He stuck it on a post.
Some Jap had lost his head (ha ha). To get
at home with death, I guess. Or maybe let
his meanness out, or maybe just to boast.
Whatever. A marine I know has rows
of testicles in alcohol. He set
his heart on getting balls and you can bet
he did. Some shit. But that's the way it goes.
Another friend of mine put lots of work
in, pulling teeth from skulls and stringing them
into a necklace. Then he sat and wrote
his girl and told her he was bringing her
a gift. I feel a little funny when
I think of those old teeth around her throat.
Jan 1979
Delayed Green
"Yet, if, in the foggy Aleutians, if on the
misty
Island of Kiska, island of Attu, any
Flower, however weak and bleak, appears
In spring ...
We must ask the men who have been there; they will know."
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1940)
"The pressure of public events turned her more
and more
toward propaganda-verse before and during World War II."
John Frederick Nims (1981)
I undertake to answer, even now.
I was there and foggily recall
the flowers, not weak or bleak, though small
that sprang surprisingly from earth somehow
in spring and collected in blue moving crowds.
The Aleutians, we used to say, get lots of sun:
I think last year the sun came on a Monday.
But then the flowers rose and spoke out loud.
I guess there was a lot of fog but I
remember most the biting sand that blew
through fastened windows, into food and teeth,
and formed a howling grit that hid the sky
Well, that was long ago, before we knew
the missiles make those edges obsolete.
Jul 1982, Dec 1984
The Hostages' Release
The former hostages were mostly masked
by duty; by the strangeness of their stay
by wanting to display the wholesome grace
a hundred million viewers asked of them;
and masked again by television news,
a play on lives, whose flickers tattled to
humiliate us nightly with defeat
and then to mass us for a late success.
A tearlit girl, beside a road to cheer,
when asked what all this meant to her, said she
could pass it on, a souvenir, and she
was now a part of history: and Paul-
ine on the road to memory, she clutched
at time to frame and fasten on the wall.
Feb 1981, Jul, Aug 1982
How The Battle Begins
On October's day in the year unknown
The soldiers without claim are standing,
Waiting, afraid before the cave, the gate,
The red screw of morning, the livid dawn.
"Be fast," the Captain whispers, "when the
Bugle sounds the reveille. We will
Undertake the enemy, rapist of our pay,
Usurper of the bells, anomalies."
"The Captain," says Private Sticking, looking
Sidelong at this watch, "is an ass. I wish I
Were with Giants, or artful Dodgers.
What self-consuming program made us this?"
"Quite, men," the Captain hisses, "I see
The sweat of perfidy shining juicy
In my crosshairs. Forward, you bastards,
Do you want to respirate forever?"
And the Captain bares his weapon and his wand
And is translated to a moist powder
Whose spray is not lost on Private Sticking
Who nevertheless cries, "Shit!" and fires.
May 1984
Passing Through Three Intervals of Time
1944
The
struggling hills looked drowning in the fog
the winter noon we sailed from San Francisco.
By dusk the frames
were gibbering like cats
and made me wonder how the rivets held
and plates kept out a cemetery sea.
At
chow that night the ship rolled wild and trays left unsecured
jumped out and slammed against the bulkheads. Before the
crapulence was done a greasy slop of gravy gravitated back and
forth across our boots.
First day on Guam I went to pee
beside a path and suddenly
five or six Chamorro women
walked solemnly surveying me
toward a hut I found out
later was their church.
It only struck me then
that ordinary people
might be doing ordinary things
around a battle for their home.
We wondered if the natives kept their Japanese
money in case we lost, having had their paths peed on first by the
Spanish, then by us, then the Japanese, then us again. This time
with landing barges, tanks, B-29’s, a hundred thousand troops,
and all the passing piss of war.
1963
The
beaming hills were bathing in the sun
the afternoon we sailed from San Francisco.
By dusk the waves were splitting at the helm
like cream. At the rail I hypnotized
myself with the rhythms of the ship and sea.
That night at dinner waiters dressed in white
served consommé and duck and pastry trays.
Before the elegance was done we felt
the lure of artificial privilege
and the poised excitement of first nights out.
The
day we landed in Tahiti, vanilla filled the air and we saw
the local dancers practicing like athletes for the annual trials. We
had to dodge the motor scooters and bought two tikis from a
Frenchman who carved them himself.
We overheard a tourist ask an islander
if there were any places still unspoiled
and he said not since Captain Cook.
An
ex-insurance agent from
New Zealand found us a breadfruit tree
and said the making of the movie
“Mutiny on the Bounty” nearly wrecked the island’s economy.
Then he took us to a
black sand beach
and diamond waterfalls
and mountains set in clouds.
1967
was diesel fuel, hot fresh vanilla
because de Gaulle sent out the legionnaires
to build a place for testing atom bombs.
(date unknown)
Matched Pair
1. Common Place (c. 1950)
For months I scanned the teletype’s strange creeds:
late weather, short supplies, condensed commands,
the Air Corps flight plans, and codes I couldn’t read.
Upstairs the Air Corps also got its plans;
downstairs the Signal Corps, by way of me,
got duplicates that no one seemed to need.
One day I saw that where two air lanes crossed,
two airplanes had been scheduled to collide—
Red 40, Green 8: same time, same height.
I ran upstairs and told an officer.
“You’re drunk,” he said at first—but I was right.
He radioed one plane to change its course,
and since we didn’t want to get some crew
in trouble, no one else there ever knew.
2. One Track Mind (c. 1890)
My grandfather’s first job was driving drays,
horse-drawn wagons, to and from the trains.
One night (the family story goes) he ran
and shouted at the agent that two trains
were on one track and headed for a crash.
(We always laughed at this—he never drank.)
My grandfather went and looked and then ran back.
“God damn it, Bartee” (another laugh—we had a
myth he also never swore) “God damn it,
Bartee,” he said, “those trains are on the same track.”
The swearing (we said) convinced the agent, who ran
and threw a switch and made young Brown a hero,
for a while, though now not many of us know.
(date unknown)