Oh, My

September 30, 1968
The New Jersey was bombarding the DMZ
But what the hell did we know about that
And even grey eyed Pallas Athene
So far away from home?

We were in Quong Tre province
Right or someplace like that and
Had taken a lot of casualties.

Flying in and that was when
Wars were really fucked up.
And just 20 years ago and now?

And all that jive doesn’t have the
Same whatever.

You know…Used to be you would be sitting
In a bar someplace and you would
Hear them… all those names like poetry
Pleiku,  An Khe,  Ban Me Thuot
LZ Blackhawk,  LZ Hardtimes
Happy Valley,  Phu Cat
And the guys they always look like the same
At least to you… and the stories…

“We were in Quong Tre which
Is up north and we were in
The bush and nervous  a ambush
Remember the claymores said
This side towards enemy
And thank fucking God for
That some of these guys were stoned
All the damn time so then we heard
This noise behind us and then nothing
And then this noise again so I got
Spooked we had these Remington
Full Auto shotguns which you could
Buy on the black market in Saigon
And I just turned around and fucking
Let it go and we heard screams like I never
Heard!  That was something big!
“What the fuck was that? “ we shouted… deaf
Of course and this guy… what was his name?
The guy who died of sunstroke later
From Arkansas… he went and saw
“It’s a fucking tiger man!” he shouted.
And it was you know.
I killed a lot of guys in Nam
But I never cried except then.”

And these guys go out and
You follow them and they kind of
Slob their way into the car
And you want to say Hey I heard
That fucking story twice already
How many goddamn tigers were there in Nam?
But you saw something…

 

Not then.  But before… two guys who were
There together one to the other
Trying to remember the name of
Another guy who was killed and
Before that telling their stories…
They made this kind of
Sign to each other which meant
“I’m there, man. I’m there.” But trying to
remember there was nothing, trying
To remember the name there was nothing
So this was true. This was true.

The poems that you read
All so typical... the dead soldiers’  ghosts
Returning to their girlfriends and wives
Years later and looking on them the silent dead
Looking on “Ladies who were lovely once.”

And so in some Greek bar way BC
Two guys drink wine or whatever
And say there is a third guy there
You should have been with us
On the Anabasis those damn Persians
You do an Anabasis you know
When you shout the sea! the sea! it is right.
And who was that guy who got killed in Naxos
You know…?

And really they don’t remember
And they slob into their chariot or whatever

And we were in Quong Tre province
Or something like that.

Oh, my.

Uncle Joe

 

My Uncle Joe O'Brien had a different kind of war.

Didn't go the Basic. Went to the Jersey shore.

How strange life is! But you have to bear and grin it.

When you're a fighting stenotypist who can type 130 words a minute!

 

When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor Joe was working in DC.

And here's just how it happened as he told it all to me.

The Japs had bombed Pearly Harbor soon all the world would be on fire.

Joe thought he'd have a word with old General Strattemeyer.

 

Who was a major general but in certain quarters passed

As a mellow guy named "Poppy" or, more often, "Straddleass..."

Who put his arm around him. "I just can't help you, Joe

It looks like it's a World war and everybody's gotta go."

Then paused and beamed at Uncle Joe and gave a little laugh.

"Just kidding, Joe I need you. I need you on my staff! "

They gave my Uncle Joe a uniform and all that fiddle dee

Then he and General Strattemeyer went down to Wildwood by the Sea

With some other VIPs whose name you’d like to know

But that’s a secret history and they’re all dead and so

Joe was a stenotypist and a master of the keys

And he went with General Strattemeyer to plan our victories

He was at the Cairo conference and at the Yalta conference too

“Yalta was rather awful but in Cairo – what a view!”

He sat across from FDR. “He was often quite a wreck.

Stalin loved a samovar and so did Chang Kai Shek

I remember all the words to the song that we once sang

About Stalin and Churchill in a tent with Madame Chang.”

Let’s go to 67. And how nothing could really beat a

Drunken happy Uncle Joe singing his version of Aida

With Stalin as the tenor and the soprano Madame Chang

And the Stone Guest from Don Giovanni requiring them to hang.

“Celeste Aida” is the song that I put on.

When my Uncle Joe was dying back in 2001.

Il tuo bel cielo vorrei ridarti, Le dolci breeze del patrio suol;

Un regal serto sul crin posarti, Ergerti un trono vicino al sol, ah!

 

 

Once There Was Childermas Gazelles

 

Once there was Childermas Gazelles asleep in the green chapel
and food! food! food!  and great clipper ships
and President Taft leaning out smiling and smiling into symbolic quantities of small arms fire!

There was median and modulus. The promise of parallel universes! of a color called panelume!

And we were all magic paradisoadoration jukebox perfection Christmas Titian cortex flung out in the wild blue yonder with a shoeshine and a smile.

The young Goethe plays with his toy theatre!
The Tsar accepts all these restraints with extraordinary serenity and moral grandeur!
Jack Ruby gets some good coke!
Henry James writes a letter to his friend!

But now we are void alphabet eggs at best waiting for the spasm war when there will be gulftown galactic lamentation hometowns with bones bones bones and there will be no modulus
except deep under Cheyenne mountain where the joint chiefs dream the long dream

Unsyllabled Poontang!