We all grew up on G.I. Joe.
Gospel hope was underlined
by uniforms in willing green.
Touching down from Vietnam—
a sandblast same as battle zones
with air-sick bags across your lap.
So young to weather scraps of men
in piles of doom like
stir-fry scooped on beds of rice.
Huts and homesteads bombed and flicked—
just ashes from a cigarette.
Courage was the currency.
We stuffed your pockets with our need—
ordered death like mincemeat pie.

The judgment tomes that hit the air
were wet grenades and pressure valves
on pots of stew you didn’t cook.
Because you went, you wore blame
on covers of a magazine,
gave your Purple Heart away,
shredded Newsweek in your head.
Our patriotic tetanus shots
belonged in slabs of open wounds
of men like you who signed their names
on corners of a chopping block.

Felt the sweat of protest’s heat
in socks that should have been
safe harbors of a baseball glove.
Army boots like penny jars
that held the toes of misspent youth.
The hooting owl freedom calls—
a beeper in a doctor’s car.
War limps madly among the weeds
and cattails of a muzzled gun:
like marble for the just-ice cause
of something we treasure
but cannot spell and always lose—
guppies in the mouths of whales—
of raw and ripping rifle fire.