soldier

If it were smoke, and not a sound, again the remembering would be a choke. A cold cough from camp stoves and coalfire. A coat length away from blasting caps with no wires. Blasted captains wiring home to no wives. Seated soldiers bleeding alone to no lives, If it were smoke and not a sight, again, The remembering would be a blinking, hot knives undoing steady hands, wrinkled fever-dreaming youths in foreign lands.

Over-there was never here, a location changing as the news, prepared for smeared, re-arranging faces in the few, the proud, the blind, the waging war, the staging for a larger house, the moving up, the ranks, the banks of rivers bulging, planting bombs and bulbs in virgin earth. If only I could be interred. 

If it were smoke and not a word, again, the remembering would be a blessing, blurred, a ghost, a spirit, at most, I’d hear it in the night, not dream it, right? But no, I dream it, a dream, it blots out the night sky, inside, the world behind my right eye, the left sees out. What’s left eases doubt, down my neck like hearing my own name. 

What is it? I know I would recognize it. Say it once, I will write it down in the dirt. And when the wind removes me, the name will go as it proves weak to the touch, a wreck of sighs, it stands above me, a standard, above me, in the wind, away it flies, my name, what is it? I watched it go. I remember that alone. At a moment, I was strong and held a flame, in the next, I stepped in the dark and lost a name.

 *****         

Men walking, again. Standing and walking. Could they be talking towards coming for me, Would they be talking, even be trying, Through the fields of the dying, to discover me. To recover things left, lost to the battle, amongst the death rattle-ing chorus of saints, if heroes could gather me, send a boat after me, down the river, I’d row without water, a foe with out father, out feeling, out fear, Men seen walking, stepping and walking, could they be enemies, coming for me? 

Am I the last, beyond the edge of a boom? A blast, beyond the doors of a room? could my ears ringing be men, calling for me? Calling “amen!” Calling “we’ve killed them, again, each one, done is our work, except for the last, beyond the edge of the blast, the one we can’t see, or care to, he’s free by omission, if he dares to reveal his position, we end him!” Am I safer here? Will I come to savor ‘here?’ My savior here, but they come to sever ‘here’ from ‘here?’ Obsessed, again, Several ‘heres’ for a man, a plant that no one hears, affixed without a plan. 

 *****         

A new kind of anger. From a new place, in the past. The last time I saw my pa, my ma, my rifle, my letters. The first mirror, the nearer I look at him, I fear it. did I know him? If I had legs, they would look like his legs. My feet, his feet. Socks, wraps, boots, and the legs. Did I know him before, again, a friend, the end of memory, before, again, as ends go, it was the worst kind. Refusing superlative, the first time, commemorative photograph, releasing control of a legacy, looking down to my leg and see the terminus, the germ is dust, the endless sand of understanding, 

la arena sin fin, me llamó desde lejos, 
lejos de casa, cualquier casa, 
donde mis padres, esperando, respirando, 
miran hacia el este, antes de que termine el sol, 
cualquier sol, alcanzando sin brazos, 
susurrando,“nuestro hijo perdido.” 

But again, not a son, a picture belonging not to anyone. If I had his luck, unstuck from the ground, Able and free, in the air, til I’m drowned in time and soil, the sands of my toil, if I knew him should I shudder, should I gasp, vomit on myself and sob till I can’t? Before, perhaps, I would have known how to act. 

 ***** 

And so it comes, to me, to this. And if there were a chance, if bliss were not romance, but fact, and fact were not romance, but truth. And truth, if my body were a house, a skin of bricks, thick and growing out. Only the sick of head would approach and beat the knock with mouths instead. Fools standing and greeting stones. Alone but not exposed, autonomous, composed of life, liberty, and the holy ghost, and wholly chosen by my birth, from earth I grow to my end, no friends to witness my slow descent. Begin, my bones, as before, defend me from one last lost war. 



 * 



I remember at times, a time before. Reading or seeing, looking more into books. Or magazines, if those are things, The words come back, obscured, but back, and not my heart, but my skin, a part of me is hurting, and the stars shine the brighter for it. Reaching down for it. I opened, a flower to the sun, but cannot help but feel the turning, done for now, but opening again, as before. 

O before. Where was it? I was looking out, with eyes, with everything. There was a light, and a brighter light, And dark before, and after there was more, and night had fallen, or I had fell, to here, or to here, was I surrounded, or who is to tell? I could have felt their hands that caught me, caught and kept me, was I stuck, or stuck before? I had a smile, and I felt the smile end. But they said to fix it “smile, yet, smile again.”