Tag: war poem

A Walk in the Sun

By Milton P. Ehrlich

Shooting at each other—
more exciting than sex.
Blood tastes better
than vintage wine.

One of our ladies-man guys
howls in pain trying to piss.
Sergeant bellows: Ain’t you
ever had the clap before?

If I was not ordered
to carry the BAR—slung
over my weary shoulder
with a torn rotator cuff,

I might have enjoyed
the camaraderie
of a walk in the sun—until
an ambush tourniquets my breath.

A burst of my machine gun
hops them up and down
with still-open eyes and red-hot toes.
Their legs scatter high in the air
like the high kick-ready Rockettes.

We are all outsiders
who used to be human.
The quicksand of hate
sucks the love out of us,

and the elixir of violence
promises a rush until we see
what we have wasted.

We step into silence.

 

Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D., is an 87-year-old psychologist. He is also a Korean War veteran who has published many poems in periodicals such as the Wisconsin Review, Descant, Toronto Quarterly Review, London Grip, Vox Poetica, Taj Mahal Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and the New York Times.

Photo by Holly Mindrup on Unsplash.

PTSD Pantoum

By Jean Waggoner

 

Me and Apple were out on patrol….
Each story begins with a line like this,
the travesty of its grammar a buddy thing
for the philosopher-boy turned to grunt.

Each story begins with a line like this,
a breath-stopping return to war
for the philosopher-boy turned to grunt,
blank-out humping huge loads, splattered in guts.

A breath-stopping return to war,
newest research blames prior trauma;
blank-out humping huge loads, splattered in guts
(What a nice cost-savings for Veterans Affairs).

Our newest research blames prior trauma;
he saw a brakeman uncle’s three-day death;
(What a nice cost-savings for Veterans Affairs!)
a man’s train-severed leg and wailing from pain.

He saw a brakeman uncle’s three-day death,
not the buddy blown up in WW II:
a man’s pain-severed leg and wailing in pain,
or maimed Civil War vets in Depression soup lines.

Not the buddy blown up in WW II,
not the leap to the trench from your rest:
or maimed Civil War vets in Depression soup lines:
blame it on the screaming child at night.

Not the leap to the trench from your rest,
of your father’s or brothers’ war, or yours;
blame it on the screaming child at night.
Those without prior trauma don’t get PTSD.

Of your father’s or brothers’ war, or yours,
Afghanistan vets trump them all.
Those without prior trauma don’t get PTSD;
(Ah, so many recruits homeland-brutalized.)

Afghanistan vets trump them all.
Maybe our movies can shoulder some blame;
(Ah, so many recruits homeland-brutalized.)
Before “shell shock” and PTSD, the cowards were shot!

Maybe our movies can shoulder some blame
for extreme violence or magical thinking.
Before “shell shock” and PTSD, the cowards were shot!
Me and Apple were out on patrol….

 

Jean Waggoner has sporadically published poems, stories, articles and fine arts reviews and she co-authored The Freeway Flier and the Life of the Mind, a book about the Adjunct Faculty experience. “PTSD Pantoum” references a controversial 2007 Institute of Medicine and National Research Council PTSD analysis discussed in Sebastian Junger’s “The Bonds of Battle” in Vanity Fair, 2016. Jean has retired, no longer leads an Inlandia Institute creative writing workshop, and will soon update her website.

Photo credit: Elijah O’Donnell on Unsplash.

War

By Rachel Custer

 

In the same way that an old man without a home
is more likely to be bearded, war shuffles
first into small towns. Picks up cans ‘longside
the rurr-route. War knocks first on the faded
doors of the poor. He’s a carnival barker, this
one, his eyes full of young men with bodies
that want to eat the world. War leads a boy
to the highest point, says all this can be yours.
War stands in a lineup with the regular suspects
and do his eyes shine. Do his face look pretty
next to them old boys. War sits in the gas station,
drinks bad coffee with old friends. War sees
the harvester chewing down the field like a man
kiss his way up a girl’ leg. Pastor invites him
to church to say a piece. You wouldn’t believe
how funny war can be, and how he knows
the best stories. War leans in to the needs a boy
could never speak. That lifelong smoker’s voice.
Says: Listen, boy, I can take you somewhere real,
can make you somebody new. Same old women
ain’t for you. You ain’t for here and nothing else.
War look all day long like a poor farm boy, with
eyes like he went somewhere. But see his hair?
That cut a city style, a rich man cut. War tell you:
Boy, the places you’ll see. Boy never hear what
war say through his smile, never hear a word
war say after war say but.

 

Rachel Custer’s first full-length collection, The Temple She Became, is available from Five Oaks Press. Other work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, B O D Y, [PANK], and DIALOGIST, among others. Visit her website at www.rachelcuster.wordpress.com.

Photo credit: Image of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica by tiganatoo via a Creative Commons license.