road like a river
--- for four steadfast Marine
brothers-in arms (Semper Fidelis)
(this poem was written in 1968,
but the music and the dance is still the same)
the bus rolls
up an off-ramp
somewhere near
skidmore, missouri
moving toward
the second show
of the day
two is nothing
new
it’s 1968 &
business is good
behind me
the trumpet man
quietly blows
"taps"
into his horn
his solo down
cold
all heart &
soul
all of our moves
choreographed
in one of the
few
dress blue
precision
how many miles
have we made
how many hours
riding the blue
highways
of tennessee
arkansas
& missouri
burying fellow
Marines
shipped back
home
back to the
“world”
in flag-draped
caskets
courtesy of the
k.i.a. travel bureau
unfortunate sons
from
pleasantville, tennessee
evening shade,
arkansas
skidmore,
missouri
who died
in
alien-sounding places like:
pleiku
pleime
dak to
my khe
my lai
an loc
mostly grunts
who never lived
to see their
twenty-first birthdays
killed by:
automatic
weapons
artillery
mortars
rocket-propelled
grenades
mines
booby traps
& “friendly
fire”
the military
“euphemism of
all euphemisms”
after awhile the
dead faces
all start to
look the same
all of the
essential information
removed
faces pale and
shiny
like dime store
dolls
beards beginning
to break through
the makeup
life sucked out
of the eyes
gray-blue fish
belly lips
gazing into a
coffin
was like looking
into a dark
crystal ball
you start to
realize
that you might
be
catching a
glimpse
of your future
if you're around
them
long enough
the dead will
start to speak
they'll say
put yourself in
our place
sometimes
i would try to
shut out
the whole scene
i'd think about
crazy things
"roadrunner"
cartoons
on a boyhood
saturday morning
wile e. coyote
catching hell
electrocution
burnt to ashes
falling from
cliffs
squashed flat as
a pancake
dynamited into
tiny pieces
that hang in the
air
for a second
then fall apart
like a broken plate
then he's up
& whole
again
& back in
the game
there were days
i leaned out so
far
i almost slipped
over the edge
too much time
balanced on a
ledge of indifference
making vain
attempts
at trying to
make sense
of this
pointless game
of a thousand
cuts
where
everything's
always the same
except the face
of the mother
holding
"old glory"
sooner or later
you get the
picture
something you've
really known all
along
ain't nobody
fooling nobody
about where this
highway goes
now we
understand
that this road
is like a river
of black water
pulling us on
farther &
faster
all bound for
that vanishing point
somewhere
in the
heat-shadowed distance
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