i don’t know who i am anymore, i was once secure in my identity, government issue (g.i.) joe, a man who fights for his country, but i’ve learned too much, am i really just an action figure? with the army? navy? air force? marines? all of them at once? it’s not possible for one man/toy? to endure so much training, so much violence, and the (g.i.) is a lie, hasbro is my creator, not the government or god, so confusing, real american hero, what bunk, in comic books and on tv, all of that is me making money? inspiration for young boys to grow up and kill? please help, i’m so distraught, born in 1964, then vietnam, iraq, afghanistan, how many men now have ptsd because of me?
Tag: War
Neruda and War Addiction
somewhere in neruda’s memoir he speaks about addiction, war addiction and che guevara, ecstatic life on a constant journey toward death, craved knowing he might die, was going to die, unity with the greatest unknown, heaven maybe, or not, but on the way, violence, machine gun eruption, mortar explosions, deafening everything, all thought becoming sound, becoming silence, perhaps the final silence, and now, instead of fear, there is oneness, war, when we are really in it, makes us whole
Korean War Memorial
Avoidance
no, not the
details, foreheads trickling
blood of children
and i’ve seen
this before in
israel and gaza
the photos and
headlines, hopeless
but then i
turn off my
phone and it
all just disappears
and i think
about the basketball
playoff game instead
COVID-19 Passes The Vietnam War
and when the virus
constricted air from over
58,220 lungs, no one
came to the door
informing us of death’s
arrival, no uniformed soldier’s
solemn words to comfort
ventilator’s failure to save
lives, this war of
no bullets, no answers
to the endless quest
for vaccine’s hopeful solace
we look to blame
those who cannot contain
this invisble reaper, as
if this were one
person’s fault, as if
we could just drop
a nuke and make
it all go away
instead we walk by
black granite names, mourning
the many more, expiring
with each passing day
Hiroshima
smudges, they became smudges, places where people
used to stand, sit, exist, before the blast, easier to
see shadows than the melted faces, missing eyes
enola gay, little boy, happy nursery rhyme in the sky
where men dropped the end of life, bulbous war container
children in the death zone like charcoal burned with no grill
truman’s august angst, questions like grant’s total war to
conclude inferno, force bushido to surrender their young kamikaze
suicide desperation, a nation’s emperor unwilling to stop suffering
until finished, after nagasaki, inception of nuclear era
destruction, non-fiction, we know, we know, but better
to kiss strangers in streets than think of erasing future’s time
Fort Stewart Memorial
This was published back in 2007.
Daniel W. Polk 