December 9th
Two years ago, Reservist,
you would have burned
your draft card or
else have gone A.W.O.L.
but you stayed to serve
the Air Force. Your head churned
with bad solutions, carrying your heart like a football
to the goal, your good heart
that never quite ceases
to know its wrong. From
Frisco you made a phone call.
Next they manufactured you
into an Aero-medic
who placed together
shot off pieces
of men. Some were sent off
too dead to be sick.
But I wrote no diary
for that time then
and you say what you
do today is worse.
Today you unload the bodies of men
out at Travis Air Force
Base- that curse-
no trees, a crater
surrounded by hills.
The Starlifter from
Vietnam, the multi-hearse
jets in. One hundred
come day by day
just forty-eight hours
after death, filled
sometimes with as
many as sixty coffins in array.
Manual Minus Number
Sixteen Handbook
perfers to call this
the human remains.
This is the stand
that the world took
with the enemy's children
and the enemy's gains.
You unload them slipping
in their rubber sacks
within an aluminum doffin-
those human remains,
always the head higher
than the ten little toes.
They are priority when
they are shipped back
with four months pay
and a burial allotment
that they enclose.
All considerations
for these human remains!
They must have an escort!
They are classified!
Never jettisoned in
emergencies from any planes.
Stay aboard! More important
now that they've died.
You say, "You're treated like
shit until you're killed."
And then brought into The Cave,
those stamped out human remains
on a Starlifter, a Cargomaster,
a packet, a Hercules
while napalm is in the frying pan,
while napalm is in the death nest.
And what was at home
was The Peace March-
this Washington we seize.
you would have burned
your draft card or
else have gone A.W.O.L.
but you stayed to serve
the Air Force. Your head churned
with bad solutions, carrying your heart like a football
to the goal, your good heart
that never quite ceases
to know its wrong. From
Frisco you made a phone call.
Next they manufactured you
into an Aero-medic
who placed together
shot off pieces
of men. Some were sent off
too dead to be sick.
But I wrote no diary
for that time then
and you say what you
do today is worse.
Today you unload the bodies of men
out at Travis Air Force
Base- that curse-
no trees, a crater
surrounded by hills.
The Starlifter from
Vietnam, the multi-hearse
jets in. One hundred
come day by day
just forty-eight hours
after death, filled
sometimes with as
many as sixty coffins in array.
Manual Minus Number
Sixteen Handbook
perfers to call this
the human remains.
This is the stand
that the world took
with the enemy's children
and the enemy's gains.
You unload them slipping
in their rubber sacks
within an aluminum doffin-
those human remains,
always the head higher
than the ten little toes.
They are priority when
they are shipped back
with four months pay
and a burial allotment
that they enclose.
All considerations
for these human remains!
They must have an escort!
They are classified!
Never jettisoned in
emergencies from any planes.
Stay aboard! More important
now that they've died.
You say, "You're treated like
shit until you're killed."
And then brought into The Cave,
those stamped out human remains
on a Starlifter, a Cargomaster,
a packet, a Hercules
while napalm is in the frying pan,
while napalm is in the death nest.
And what was at home
was The Peace March-
this Washington we seize.