Robert Cooperman- Three Poems

At the Peace March: Washington, D.C., 1970

 

We walked five abreast past the White House,

police horses snorting in our faces, their hot

sides nudging us to stay in line, the mounts

trained not to flinch from sudden movements,

not to mind stepping on protestors, not to care

about our surging, shouting multitudes

while their riders slugged us with billy clubs,

to silence our outrage and peace songs.

 

But George, my cousin Sammy’s friend,

tried to break out of line and stab his key

into police horses’ flanks, hoping we’d follow

him into a full scale riot, our faces bloodied

by the forces of fascism, on the late news.

 

“Are you trying to get us all killed?”

I finally yanked him by his collar.

 

“This is pointless,” he flung off my grip. 

“Anyone can march like robots.  We need to make

war-loving Republican parents see their kids

are getting manhandled by the Pigs.”

 

Maybe he had a point, or maybe he was all talk,

for when Sammy gave him a look of, “Stop it,

asshole,” George shrugged, fell back in line,

and marched as peacefully as the rest of us,

 

an obedient little Lord Fauntleroy in knickers.

 

            

The Worst Thing That Ever Happened at a Peace March, 1970

 

We never got beaten or busted and had to spend

nights, before being bailed out, in a stadium’s

makeshift prison, sleeping on a sleet-freezing field,

thrown slops, and denied our one phone call.

 

But once, we lost my cousin Sammy in the multitudes

that had poured into D.C. to exorcise Nixon’s bombs:

malevolent water balloons.  Sammy’s wife, Laurel,

panicked when we reached the parking garage,

and he wasn’t there, grinning that he’d fooled us.

 

“Where’s my husband?” Laurel demanded. 

as if we’d handed him over to the cops or the FBI

for interrogation, torture, experiments with drugs

that made acid look like a civilized glass of sherry.

We tried to convince her Sammy knew where we were

and would find his way to us, just give him time.

 

Finally he did, hugging Laurel, apologizing

the crowds had been too thick to fight, so he’d waited,

as if for the stragglers in a cattle or buffalo stampede.

 

I never said a word to Laurel; maybe I should’ve,

maybe no need, but I noticed the smudge he rubbed away

when his friend George signaled behind Laurel’s back.

 

Several months later, William was born; they stayed

together until war’s end, family men exempt.

 

 

At Station Eleven, II

 

On my second foray to weasel out of the draft—

this time, a shrink’s letter making me out to be

crazier than Hamlet before he stabbed Polonius—

I sat, my leg piston-jerking hard enough to shoot

through a Fiat’s hood, and saw him, naked except

for his briefs and Irish hair wild as if he’d skipped rope

with a live electrical wire, as he sleepwalked the room.

 

“Fall in!” a doctor ordered in a voice accustomed

to being obeyed in, “Sir, yes, Sir!” terror.  The kid

ignored him.  “Fall in!” the doctor bellowed, not sure

if the kid was full of it or zombie-dragging-crazy.

 

When two M.P.’s shouted commands: again, nothing. 

One aimed his rifle at the kid’s face, blood about to paint

the walls, when the kid launched everything he’d eaten

the past week all over the barrel, all of us pivoted away

from that semi-liquid kaleidoscope, but silently cheered

a truly great performance, the kid collapsing, carried out.

 

After I’d pleaded with the army shrink, I saw “Red” 

skipping away, as if to meet the woman of his dreams.  

I ran after, to ask how he’d done it, but he'd vanished.