What if you’re Helen
but their boats were made
to kill?
What if each part
served some small
purpose — here:
where they will melt you
down.
Or here: where they will rip
you up,
will take your insides
out, will tell you what they are. Say
that you’re Helen, sick
of hearing how they made
the fucking boats.
What if a woman
and a whale are the same
thing?
I sin.
I atone.
We hug.
Any decent thinking man knows
that when he passes the ammunition…
he is participating in the killing also.”
-Larry Dewy
When I was young
I imagined justice would taste sweet.
Like a righteous knight satisfied
to combat ubiquitous evil.
But I’ve never met such a warrior,
nor such justice, rarely such evil.
Justice is a bitter Merlot,
or Sumatra. An aged Bourbon.
Fragile recipes fraught with risk,
borne of ancient, intricate processes.
One small variance,
the batch is intractably tainted.
From tax payer to sniper
we have blood on our hands.
Some righteous, some collateral.
We so easily become what we have vowed
to destroy. Yet destroy it, we must.
Bitter justice requires impossible accuracy.
The exact recipe has been lost to humanity.
Maybe we only briefly had it, traded it
for a forbidden flavor so long ago.
Maybe the righteous knight is a myth.
Maybe he wrote poems in the evening
trying to make sense of his day job.
As a child I would steal a sip
of my dad’s coffee,
but preferring simplistic sweetness,
my innocent taste buds grimaced.
Every now and then I reminiscently indulge
the blissful ignorance of Halloween candy.
Now middle-aged, I’m more satisfied
with a morning cup of black coffee.
Or with dinner, a red wine.
The naive shock metamorphosed
into provocative contemplation.
I’ve spread my wings.
I’d never go back, even if I could.
The tongue inside my graying head
prefers bourbon over ice cream.
The burn reminds me I’m still alive,
the smoothness teases that maybe
I still deserve pleasure.
Conflicting sensations generated
from a single event.
Pride and shame
Regret and anticipation
Humor and horror
You’ll never experience that
in a jelly bean.
Merlot. Sumatra. Bourbon.
Adult flavors for an adult world.
My burdened mind and slight bulge
between L4 and L5 seldom consent
to a full night’s sleep.
Having wrestled with Power greater than
myself, I’ve earned my limp
and been rewarded with knowledge
of precarious joy, mysteriously
laced within the harsh and bitter
flavors of real life.
We were just trying to kill each other, and beside you I now sit.
I am exhausted.
You are full of holes…
…from the rounds I put in your chest.
Your breathing is getting shallow, you don’t have much time. I will never know your name.
I wonder if you have a family you won’t see again.
I have a daughter I haven’t met.
Your eyes get heavy. I wonder how you’d treat me if our situation was reversed.
I wouldn’t want to be alone.
So here I sit, shooing the flies aways as you take your last breath.
A fortnight
since fire consumed the ship
in the mid-Atlantic.
Ten days since the last rain.
The launch started with twelve.
One jumped overboard
with his madness, certain
he could swim it.
The next three
were hoisted over
with all due respect
and ceremony.
A fourth of these
sank two days ago.
Then, yesterday,
Purvis passed.
But his body rested astern
by silent assent.
What seaman
has not regarded,
with longing even,
the fine tan legs
of his fellow sailors?
But these bloated shanks?
Whose idea was this–
this blasphemy
against the vaulted
primacy of the soul–
this heretical notion
that the dead’s flesh
will somehow serve them
after their death?
Some few, their eyes
red and scarce by day,
have considered this
has lost its way. forgets
where to rise and set.
bulging, bulimic. confusing
concave with convex. bangs
on drums to make an entrance
and whimpers as it goes down.
neglects the sun, becomes grey.
can’t manage to shine that old kind light
upon the earth.
wait. that’s not the moon.
it’s us. us.
and the following week my various inboxes are filled with earnest notes asking after my safety and that of my family—I come to realize that I am, in a modest way, the face of America to these many and far-flung people, and what happens to America must happen to me—and I respond that I am unharmed for the moment by the terrible assault which has galvanized us all, but that it will be a long time in coming before we know the full extent of the damage that has been caused . . .
after the tragedy—
the neighbor boy behind a tree
with his toy rifle
*appeared previously in ephemerae
The right carotid,
a vascular case
with stroke risk
so I am here.
For no reason
her heart stops,
her brain too.
I know You from Your
world and Scripture.
You drowned everything
when You repented
the brutal world You had
made. You murdered
Lot’s wife
for remembering
her city
as You burned it down.
What’s her crit?
When it comes back low,
Where’s the hemorrhage?
He cracks her sternum,
closed heart massage
minute after minute
no rhythm or hope.
You glorified Moses
who lay in wait
to murder.
You hardened Pharaoh’s heart
to alibi your slaughter
Egypt’s first-born to the last
When I take over
the bone edges
grind under my hands
her pliant heart beneath
soft and silent
but then living
pulsing
pushing back.
Time after time
You boasted I do this
so you know how mighty I am.
Half her brain returned.
They gave blood
placed a pacer
and an assist pump
got her off the table alive
but no further.
How can I find You
righteous and trustworthy,
love You or even
fear and obey You –
it’s a hundred generations
since You’ve spoken.
Since then that surgeon turned
to cosmetics, varicose veins,
I work with numbers
they don’t push back
or need reasons.
* originally appeared in The Red Wheelbarrow.
A sheriff guards the operating room. Inside
we fight. Her neck was broken in a brawl –
she thrashes and spits as we hold her shoulders
and head still, work to realign the bones
constantly checking, dreading the worst,
blunt silence, slack body. Hours later
with neck straight, flipped on her belly,
moving arms and legs before she sleeps,
I step out for a breath. The surgeon
is at the scrub sink, She’ll just kill someone else.
That may be, I say, but we won’t have killed her.
It’s been decades. I still dread and hope for her
and I treasure the stubborn skill of that surgeon.
* originally appeared in Neurology.
I left her the house
and got a place on Torley.
Each night the neighbors
put chairs on the sidewalk,
turn the TV face out, drink Iron City
and watch the kids play in the street.
I get home from work at 6 or 10
or 2, shower and then sleep
with eyes open:
a child shrieking on a hospital gurney,
her spine flayed and straightened,
the smell of burning in my hair,
a new mother life-flighted from the mall,
brain shifting in the scanner,
crushed by bleeding while we watch.
We drink coffee and wait
while a father facing doom in our hands
says goodbye to his children.
Each day I pedal in over the Bloomfield Bridge,
or drive when called at night, never dreaming
what will come next.
* originally appeared in Verse-Virtual.
The surgeon carves, dissects, sears the bleeding.
The anesthetist: numbness, paralysis, stupor.
My part: to hear and report
each limb’s electric murmurs,
the brain’s muffled replies,
mixed with the whine
of machines, arrogance, fear.
We fight for normal life on waking.
We trust normal will return for us.
They are out there, our charges,
ten thousand who woke well,
those who did not. I don’t recall
their faces, just the smell
of blood and burning,
the urgent charge, uphold life,
sick wonder when the lamp goes dark,
why did I have to see that?
*originally appeared in Neurology.
You slapped me when you saw
the purple black ashes
but I was numb to the tingle and neither of us cried.
Oh mother, mother, I don’t want to know
of wrinkled sheets and whispered conversations
and feel the pain of trying not to love you.
But I will not forgive the evenings
you were gone, the days
my father spent in anger, mending the cracks
in the house’s foundation
pounding the nails into soft, pliant wood
drinking warm beer
while you cooked dinner in tense, frustrated silence
we all ignored
until your anger flashed and caught me with your tongue.
You taught me lessons even in your silence,
the dance of avoidance, the masquerade.
The anger
lingers in that house you left.
It sits in the corners with the heavy dust,
A guest we don’t dare disturb.
The anger follows you,
reminds you of the ashes of your love letter
and the daughters who burned the words you wrote.
Its tendrils grasp for me
as I realize my handwriting mirrors yours.
Oh how the anger flashes when I see I write those letters too.
If you elicit true candor (which can
be done in many ways, like sharing
a six-pack, a fifth, or maybe even
brownies with a special ingredient),
you’ll find that pretty much everybody
has a beef: some secret grudge or sense
of injury (using the term “sense” loosely),
something about which, with the right
sequence of nods and grunts, muttered
agreement, judicious use of the words
Grandpop used for the kind of people
he disliked without knowing anything
about, you can get them to start being
more outspoken, to meet up with others
like them, to talk a lot about the kind
of guns they own—like throwing a stone
into a pond, to create circular ripples
you can watch spread out, for fun.
*First appeared in One Sentence Poems (2017)
The uniformed security guard said he couldn’t help it,
couldn’t change anything;
he was just there to see that the eviction went smoothly,
which it didn’t.
You’d think they could have waited till after Christmas.
Somehow the kid had managed
to save enough from his subsidized job to buy presents,
if not pay rent.
He’d even tried to wrap them.
He didn’t know how to fight it
and his social worker was on extended vacation.
All his damaged life
had been planned by others around his circumstances,
beyond his control.
And when he saw all ruined by the whirlwind
sweeping through his story,
he let it take hold of him too
and opened the window and began
throwing his gifts into the street,
where passersby picked them up
and walked away with them.
It was that kind of neighborhood.
As he flung them he was shouting,
“that one was for my mother,
that one was for my sister, that one …”
And throwing them out the window,
that was for himself.
*First appeared in Pemmican November 2009
You, the ones who, captured, face to face with death,
knelt to kiss the ground or spat through your last breath,
your torturers, your killers, still concealed,
remember damage done or harmed heart healed:
the knowledge that in their midnight’s ascendant hour
they chose to do these things, to use this kind of power.
We vote or abstain: no reason to believe or doubt;
no signposts mark the dangerous, descending route.
To crush all opposition; to force through schemes:
that’s the stuff of evil, bloody dreams,
metalled with chrome-plate hate and driven
by the corroded engine of religion.
The clouds press down; the winds grow stronger;
we’ve all seen better days, and longer.
Now the last leaf of love falls in a black November
and is burned, and no one is left to remember.
There was a chance: we made our choices;
there will be other years and other voices.
Leaching into groundwater or suspended in smoke,
you might be anywhere:
your chemical signatures imprint a billion volumes of air.
*First appeared on poetsagainstthewar.org 2003
Just before I killed him
I saw his eyes
Pleading
Then blood was running between them
and he stumbled
and fell to his knees
and it was over
He lay on his back
and still his eyes were open
moist
I checked his pockets
and found only a snapshot
of a beautiful child
with shining eyes
A younger replica
of the man who lay before me
I dropped my gun
and replaced the photo
buttoning back the pocket
I sat beside the body
until Harper came up and said, “Let’s go”
I said, “Go ahead
I’ll follow”
but I knew I wouldn’t
I began digging in the ground
and worked
and sweated more than an hour
then rolled the body into the hole
and followed it with my gun
I filled it back
and sat beneath a tree a few feet away
Once I put my fist
through a window
for no reason at all
and watched the
glass breaking
in slow motion
*Both poems are from Bill’s book The Smell of the Light: Vietnam, 1968-1969
He didn’t ask for this—this land war;
nor did his father, his grandfather, or
his grandfather’s father,
and yet—the scream of rockets,
plumes of fire and acrid smoke are as much
a part of his home as olive trees and ravens.
He thinks about his ancestors as he slinks
through a narrow alley beneath a bleak,
mid-waning moon and wonders how many
before him have cut down the same dark streets,
careful to avoid the bodies of the uncollected,
careful to remain unseen by prying eyes
as wildly desperate as his own.
Looking over his shoulder, he inches himself
towards a building, which, by some kind fate,
has remained standing—and within its limestone
walls lies something far more precious than gold,
a gift he will give to his children so he can soften
the hollow points of their cheeks.
He places three loaves of bread within the folds
of his overcoat and whispers, God forgive me
before closing the broken door.
When college fell apart I returned
my burgundy Mustang and joined the Marines.
I was in my new uniform when a friend called
to me in horror as I crossed a San Francisco street.
We marched through the City of Hue before
it was destroyed and returned through the rubble.
I loved hearing Dionne Warwick as she
blasted over loudspeakers.
I jumped out of my well-dug foxhole
when an armadillo jumped in.
I felt warm as a baby in the arms
of the corpsman who carried me out with malaria.
We loaded body bags from the Forrestal fire
onto our hospital ship; there were more dead than they said.
They did not want black leaders but had
no choice after so many soldiers were killed.
The commander sat on the hillside as my
squad led this large Tet Offensive operation.
I told the radio man to go to the back but he said
I’m coming for you and slumped dead over my body.
Airlifted to a field hospital under gunfire I saw
a soldier strangle a wounded prisoner.
At home I discarded my uniform and almost
joined the Weather Underground but married instead.
*Originally published in Persimmon Tree.
My latte life light as foam
sunny day my favorite trail.
turns to coffee grounds with just one look
at an effigy that limps toward me
a muted message of familiarity.
Turning wheels shopping cart gravel and dirt.
His empty-planet eyes pull me in like gravity.
And his cavernous face drops me in the pit
of a story he hasn’t told that I somehow know.
He’s Dave, let’s say. His fall was hard
like the booze he used when he used to care.
But clouds of drugs were a cushion to him
as he floated off too easy. And since then
nothing is easy for Dave.
His life is full: blood-soaked wounds
machine gun blasts napalm gusts ‘copter blades.
Dave found out that the hard stuff is the easy stuff.
Now, nothing is easy for Dave.
Who flew to Vietnam
like a strong proud goose
in a V-shaped flock.
Victory eluded him
and vice took its place.
Now, a vise grips his head
since he woke up hung-over
to see, that he had been used.
So he used. And no one told him
that he would find,
the hard stuff was the easy stuff.
Now, nothing is easy for Dave.
Who can’t fly away that way.
He can’t pay the fare or just doesn’t care.
I look aside afraid of his eyes
I don’t want to see them
mirroring me.
He who had fought
what some thought that I ought.
And my tennis shoes morph
into combat boots as I march into a fog
where nothing is easy.
. . . an awful silence reigned on every hand; the hills were deserted, houses smoking in the distance, and our scouts did not meet a soul.
—Tacitus, Agricola
Stabbing and thrusting in our legions,
outnumbered two to one,
we were pushing the savagery out of ourselves,
as well as the land and its people,
so that later we could fill
the empty waste with civilization.
When, in fear of us, the Caledonians set fire
to their own thatch and killed their own families,
glory was written in the flames.
Now it is only a trace against the sky.
The clean grass, the clear blue
after the last wisps dissipate—
these are not fresh pages awaiting good Latin
but our own uncertain emptiness
writ large, not exorcised. We stand
awed by our powers. We tell ourselves
we honor the dead,
but secretly we despair.
What did you see them do?
What did they do to you?
What are these things you’ve done?
What did you see them do?
What did they do to you?
What are these things you’ve done?
There are a thousand other questions–
circling, looking for a clear space to land.
Not any clearing, though.
They need a spot with enough cover.
No one around to see.
No enemy around to attack.
But there are some that have already landed.
What did you see them do?
What did they do to you?
What are these things you’ve done?
Maybe you don’t trust the questioner.
Maybe you don’t trust the questions.
Maybe you don’t trust your answers.
Do what you must.
Lie to others
but tell yourself the truth.
What have you seen them do?
What have they done to you?
What are these things you’ve done?
And listen. One more:
What can I do for you?