late night/early morning poem
If I fought in that war, they would call me mad jack.
I would go over the top and erode
in the mud, as war poets must,
but there would be unmentionable blood moments
and what was at the time called hydrophobia
by those who experienced it in north american wild animals
and in unfortunate cases their livestock and ranch dogs.
I would not be myself, especially after mad jack
caught what doctors diagnosed as shellshock and
had to learn to walk again.
People would think the worst of me and it all
would escape me through the bottoms of my stumbling feet
as smeared ink steps.
And jack come, I’d ask someone to kill me and
wake up ten years later shaking in a cold alone bed.
I would not sit up too late eating idly listening
to a bon iver song on repeat with the
words muddled together. As it stands,
my predecessor eddie went to that war and almost lost his leg
in belleau woods. He lay three days in the mud
two years older than me and drank and limped
the rest of his life. He was very funny and
never talked about it.
He is all I have, my ghost, jack’s.
Maybe once I went over the top shivering and
pissing my brown trousers
and this is how I know things now. But tonight,
lying in bed by the heating vent, I did not fight
in that war.
I would go over the top and erode
in the mud, as war poets must,
but there would be unmentionable blood moments
and what was at the time called hydrophobia
by those who experienced it in north american wild animals
and in unfortunate cases their livestock and ranch dogs.
I would not be myself, especially after mad jack
caught what doctors diagnosed as shellshock and
had to learn to walk again.
People would think the worst of me and it all
would escape me through the bottoms of my stumbling feet
as smeared ink steps.
And jack come, I’d ask someone to kill me and
wake up ten years later shaking in a cold alone bed.
I would not sit up too late eating idly listening
to a bon iver song on repeat with the
words muddled together. As it stands,
my predecessor eddie went to that war and almost lost his leg
in belleau woods. He lay three days in the mud
two years older than me and drank and limped
the rest of his life. He was very funny and
never talked about it.
He is all I have, my ghost, jack’s.
Maybe once I went over the top shivering and
pissing my brown trousers
and this is how I know things now. But tonight,
lying in bed by the heating vent, I did not fight
in that war.