Blood Phantoms Endless Night
horses’ tails swish in a sunlit field.
traveling to
her father, Uncle Bob said, was
always
gentle
&
kind, always ready to laugh—
never
angry.
her
mother remembered other things:
he’d
wake up sweating—
wild
eyes in the night—
the
German officer he had to shoot, point blank—
those
eyes, that cringe,
night
after night.
in the cornfield
where
the blue boys lurched & shrieked,
the
cannons’re set up as in the old photograph,
but
freshly painted, with an asphalt walkway curving around.
&
in Bloody Lane,
where
bodies were heaped up waist-high,
I
marveled at bees in the corn tassles not 30 feet away.
at
23,000 killed, wounded & missing here.
“such
a
beautiful
vista,” the old man said, leaning on his cane:
fields
spread out
for
miles, lines of trees & hills,
farmers
on tractors,
eyes
back & down to the turning discs,
or
pulling tanks,
insecticide
hissing over the fields:
“not
a cloud in the sky.”
rows
& rows & rows & rows—
identical
white stones in the late afternoon sun:
we
pass, in a hurry,
hardly
giving them a second thought.
&
at the VA Hospital
over
the hill, unseen from the road,
those
legless & armless men are waiting,
those
old screamers
who
can’t put away the nightmares,
the
shell-shocked mutes
drooling
in their wheelchairs.
A Million Mute Corpses Speak
when the senators questioned the general
about
his former role, he said
the
whole nation owes allegiance to the president,
regardless
of what he does.
his
blue eyes glittered in the cameras.
he
shifted in his seat, a smile on his lips.
Peace
now I know the secret of peace
wandering here among hills where no one lives.
white
pines,
clumps
of sumac, hillsides covered with white oaks,
poplars
& birches:
I
never stand still for long,
but
listen & move on.
odd,
coming here, all my cares seem petty—
insignificant. the light floods the woods & valley.
even
the shadows are luminous & clear.
&
I, just another face among so many.
sitting
around a table waiting for the day to end
these
men relive the war:
sore
shoulders & jaws firing rifles at boot camp,
the
advantages of the M-16,
how
a grenade works,
blasting
tiny shrapnel in every direction.
Roger
relives watching perimeters at night,
calling
artillery strikes on anything that moved:
so
jumpy
any
monkey or snake in the brush might set him off,
he
talks of loneliness, staring into the alien night
when
everything he loved was far away.
Jerry—fond
of guns & tactics—
proudly
remembers taking an M-16 off a dead GI;
he’d
been issued an M-14
&
wanted a better gun. this was how to get
one.
Benny
talks of piles of bodies,
corpses
with arms, heads, legs ripped off,
the
twisted faces of the dead,
the
stink that filled his nostrils,
a
smell he can’t forget.
he
speaks without passion,
regretting
the wasted effort, the needless deaths,
yet
he accepts his part in it,
still
amazed people could live like this for years,
from
attack to counter-attack
hiding
in fields & ditches,
finding
uncles & sons blasted to pieces
more
often than children are born.
after
the politicians’ lies, the funerals of friends,
the
nightly deaths in the evening news,
our
rage swelled into riot.
surging
around a lone police car
we
smashed the windows out, punching the driver’s face in.
others
ran thru the main streets;
store
fronts & bank windows shattered on the pavement.
as
the dark night settled in
we
blocked traffic, heading farther & farther downtown.
suddenly
police filled the streets before us—
gas
masks, nightsticks, dogs straining at leashes.
a
charge!
shouts! screams!
nightsticks cracking skulls!
tear
gas all over main street! panic!
some
ran blindly, in any direction,
officers
in gas masks on their heels;
others
sat down in the street, folding their arms,
waiting
to be beaten & carried off.
up
the dark alley! thru sidestreets, home
again,
&
once home
I
looked at my face in the mirror,
filled
with rage & horror, alone & cut off.
years
later, on a picnic,
we
watch light play thru willow branches.
listening
to this soft breeze
I
wonder how I put the violence behind me.
so
many friends dead
&
those come back still dazed & broken,
yet
the night passes, somehow.
Burning Babies
the women
raising their hands to the sky
shrieking
before pillars of black smoke:
messengers race
thru rooms of state
chattering
their nothings for the media.
Begin smiles
& regrets; Sadat smiles & regrets.
at last the
fighting ends.
now come the
justifications,
wishing the
blood off their hands.
can it be
there’s no such thing as mercy,
as forgiveness?
The Odor of Death
after the national guard broke thru the
rebel lines,
the Red Cross
followed;
they wore gas
masks to stifle the odor of death,
collecting the
bodies, some days old,
to be burned
& buried.
Somoza claimed
total victory:
his planes
strafed roads into
stopping the
refugees in their tracks,
killing the
wounded, the aged, the sick.
The
Shotgun
back from the
army,
he went out
with friends
& hit the
bars.
where’d he
been? up to see that bitch?
what bitch?
goddamn it, you
know what bitch!
the screaming—
out of the
closet—he put the slug in—
shut up! I’ll kill you,
you keep
screamin’—damn bitch!
the police at
the door,
a hole in the
ceiling,
& she, in
the corner, her wild eyes.
The First Death
Chris was already dead,
the pieces shipped home from DaNang.
childhood friends walked up the hill
in
the rain,
remembering
campfires & gravel roads,
swimming
bare-assed in the river at dawn.
a
pump jock,
I
worked 3rd shift, had to get used to
drunkards
pulling in at 3 AM, their spit & abuse,
rich
men, angry if I didn’t get their windows clean,
&
blacks, whose eyes spoke only of
the
National Guard on their burning streets
the
summer before.
I’d
rush out of the back room
where
Milton or Wittgenstein lay open among the oil cans:
“yes
sir, what can I do for you?”
hands
& feet smelling of gasoline,
the
river running in my waking dream at 4 or 5 AM—
thinking
of the carp spawning,
slapping
their tails on the rocks at dawn,
&
the mist rising over the water,
gone
with the slightest breeze:
my
brains were ground into that pavement,
I
found my fellow men
not
so kind, & girls’d call me all night long—
“hey
honey, how’d ‘ja like to check my oil?”
weekends
I’d
hit the Spot, surrounded by
the
gruff old men I’d loved years before.
now
their sour jokes about “niggers” turned my stomach.
they’d
buy me beer, wanting to fight about
Vietnam
& Nixon & hippies,
never
giving me a moment’s peace.
drunk,
I’d wander home
under
the swinging street lamps
dreaming
of Chris, tears all over my face,
&
stop at the dam to hear the water roaring & foaming,
the
full moon overhead,
not
knowing what I’d done to find myself here,
trembling
to wake to another day.
who
could say to me then,
someone’s
coming to show you a way?
The Plumber
a tank commander in the 3rd army,
he
remembers
a
sniper perched atop a house
pinning
the men down.
he
lowered his cannon
&
“blew that kraut 30 feet in the air.”
&
no remorse. they were all so ornery
they’d
fight with their mothers.
a
clear, sunny day in July
37
years later:
children’re
playing catch on the sidwalk
&
2 young men sit on a wall,
talking
tough, to impress their girlfriends.
an
old woman hobbles by,
laughing,
an endless laugh all to herself.
Strafing in
again
the
peasants, half-naked, carrying their bundles,
eyes
full of smoke & tears, wade into the river.
the
helicopters appear from nowhere
shooting,
killing.
an
old man lies against an old tree’s roots
waiting
to die;
a
four year old girl,
her
thigh shot away, trembles,
exposed
to the heat, the flies.
again
the
buds open on the maple tree.
I
see them; it thrills me;
but
walking on, the great why still
pounds in my heart.
we
could’ve been angels—
we
should’ve been lovers—
O
memory—those fields & woods—
that
sweet, empty sky—
vanished
land of shades & dreams—
gone
in
the clatter of bullets,
in
the flapping mouths of Reagan, Haig,
shatter
the heart! the dream’s secure.
At Flanagan’s
her tits on my back:
more beer?
yeah,
four. He’d gone thru basic,
saw
his chance
&
went to
he’d
pay for drinks.
he
knew how lucky he was. look at Billy,
back
from DaNang,
dreaming
dreams he couldn’t share.
now
he sells computers—
yeah,
he could live with it;
fingers
fidget with the bar napkin,
so
many lovely women passing by.
over
there . . . every day it was life & death . . .
my
life . . . so BORING
since
I came back . . .
he
leaned forward, pointing his finger at me,
knowing
I wasn’t one of those who faced bullets.
. . . those gooks . . .
you
wouldn’t believe what they did
to
the American dead!
his
fists clenched & unclenched.
I
thought of the severed Vietnamese fingers
my
friend’s brother had sent back in the mail.
there
was nothing more to say;
I
went to the next room & danced with the girls.
Mid-Winter Cleanup
he & the boss argued
how
many rooms & how to do ‘em & how’d they ever get
that
much done;
the
rest of the crew leaned against the walls
&
perched on the stairs, watching the falling snow outside.
as a
kid, he & his brother
walked
the tracks with wagons & picked
the
coal that’d flown from the coal car
when
the tenders were pitching hard;
or
they brought laundry from the “richies”
for
their mother to do
&
pumped the outside well for water to fill the tubs
so
she could wash—
sometimes
the “richies” wouldn’t pay, saying
the
sheets weren’t clean enough.
&
when the war came, he enlisted,
went
to
a
marine whose buddies had all been tortured to death
ordering
the guards aside so he could
blast
8 Japanese prisoners;
&
he could still see
the
freed Americans whose faces had the twitches
&
the fingers destroyed with bamboo stakes.
finally,
the boss walked out,
&
he followed, shaking his head,
his
watery eyes cast down.
he
stopped, explained the boss’s ideas to the crew,
&
sighed: “a few months more, & I can
forget it all.”
Memorial Stone
a young man kneels on a stoop in the alley
& blows trumpet,
soft sad notes rise into the breeze;
a block down, beyond the shadows,
cabs & trucks & old Chevys roar in a spot of sun.
my hand, against the memorial stone, again
traces friends dead in war.
I
sit—
&
watch the bag ladies & pigeons passing,
the water’s shine as it rises from the fountain,
the manic ex-soldier who goose-steps back & forth.
the
faces rise again in my mind:
blond hair cut straight across,
his raised hand & shouted hello along the river
on a home-made raft;
& the other, all curls,
his Latin books shoved in a corner,
V-8 engine pulled apart in his bedroom,
smiling in his grease-marked underwear.
jostled now—
“you po-lice?”
he asks, then “hell, no, not widdem clothes on!”
his eyes on my janitor uniform;
reaches into his pocket for his bottle
& offers me a slug of sweet red wine,
motorcycle cap backwards on his thinning pate.
we sit together, saying little,
glad for quiet company.
Trapped in a Ravine
machine gun up ahead,
splattering bullets about their helmets:
this guy loved
women,
he was a fuckin’ drinkin’ fool!
just went off his head,
probably the last 50 feet or so
he was already dead,
you could see the bullets slamming
his body, jerking it
as he tossed the grenades in—
he paused. so that
brother-in-arms
lived again, on his lips.
The Gist of His
Command
the most sophisticated
computerized missile system the Navy’s got!
290 innocents float face down in the Gulf
& everybody’s got his reasons.
the seabeaten bodies, bagged,
are piled up for shipment home.
the shoulders of loved ones are shaking
as they bury their faces in knees:
sobs & wailing
echo thru the captain’s heart
where the gist of his command has finally
become clear.
All That You Can Be
bright boy
in his hi-tech tank
in the ARMY ad
after zeroing in
on another bright boy,
exclaims: when one
wins,
we all win!
—nightmare come again,
I see you
who went to war,
whose flesh & guts
were splattered
all over a clearing
once the helicopters
flew out of sight.
all they found:
pieces.
closed casket—
red eyes—rainy day.
gas
attack:
the bodies
heaped where
they fell, faces
relaxed
in death—eyelashes—
fingers—
lips—
simple
white clothes—
a
man,
bearded,
his head
cradled
by rock near
the
step
&
doorway to
his
house—
women & children
fallen
together,
their knees—
south:
missiles
coming,
going,
coming,
going—
Friday Afternoon
four boys sleep soundly at the break table,
caps backward over the folded arms—
the
breeze comes thru
the
open window, pushing branches & leaves,
green
shade & shine above—
friends
& cousins hunker down
in
the desert where rumors of the madman’s gas
are
rampant.
now the hostages go free;
now
they are delayed;
Thatcher
& Bush & Hussein
toss
words like grenades across nightly screens.
still the leaves float above,
still
these boys sleep at the table
& I dream of mothers
bringing
them potatoes & beans & chicken
as
they sit at table & wait, of family
prayers
& winks at sisters,
high
school sweethearts
&
prom photos with boutineers, that awkward yet
proud
smile in their first tuxedos & dresses
with
the rented limo behind—
I see their grandparents
struggling
thru wars & depressions, crop failureS
&
long hours in roaring factories, finally to stand
at
their cottage door with prayers
that sons & grandsons somehow have it better—
& I see those grandsons,
their
dreams of making it BIG, books piled up
before
them now, altars to that hungry dream.
the phone is silent.
I
cross the room in stocking feet & turn off
the
lights, & now the shadow branches bounce
on
the walls before me.
I too would dream, & kick my
feet up,
hearing
the silent winds of mountaintops,
thin
trickle of a spring thru fern & fallen leaf
in a
bright meadow below tree line:
whole lives float by, nodding as
they pass,
wrinkled
ancestors gone thru graves, descendents,
children
to be squawling in sad diapers—
speech changes, forests die back to
desert,
suns
fade—whose dreams sing as waves
in
that distant air where lovers’ lips may yet
meet
above the whine & jar of steel?—
I your distant ancestor call you now
&
pass you this picture of sleeping boys
in a
savage time, that this mystery be stars
in
your night as in mine.
Coming Home
lost again in the twilight garden among
fading flowers & the season’s last crickets,
I wander among mothers’ tears & old men’s sighs,
the last forlorn embraces of lovers, boys
torn from tender arms & loaded onto trucks
as
brass bands blare over camouflaged brims
hiding
downcast eyes. tonight, hundreds of
thousands
bed down in the desert & hear
their
hearts for the first time—cry softly
in
the deep night as the moon rises. I pass
thru
the now silent garden remembering others,
&
see the speeches & the firepower arrayed
&
the orators on all sides crying right—
kingdoms
rise & fall & threats become histories
&
the agony of thousands fills the wink of an eye.
I
turn at last & come home where Sue waits
in
the doorway, taking my hand & looking me
eye
to eye, the moon risen, full, beyond.
Vision
our bodies appear as streams of light:
turn, sun & moon—stop voice, blind sight—
shine
darkly, phantoms in endless night.
beyond
the crests, the harrowing height,
this
dream soars as a spotted eagle’s flight—
our
bodies appear as streams of light.
wish
as you will, free of your fight
as
darkling armies shriek in spite,
shine
darkly, phantoms in endless night.
thru
lunar phases night by night
spheresong
bells wake the dreamers right—
our
bodies appear as streams of light.
stone
rolls from pathway & gravedoor tonight.
phantomflesh
sings where the way is bright—
shine
darkly, phantoms in endless night.
so
finally flesh flowers as white light—
babe’s
face & naked skull fuse brightly tonight:
our
bodies appear as streams of light.
shine
darkly, phantoms in endless night.
In Fitful Sleep
legions of legless men
drag themselves in line,
armless blue-black faces
powder-burned
& mutilated,
ragged
hanging cheeks
&
ripped flesh march &
march
with eyes once
Johnny’s
now hanging
in
their sockets, march
with
Bible thumpers &
ancient
vets trotting out
flags
& angry speeches,
march,
young rambos
split
from cheek to crotch,
march,
arab bashers &
Hussein
mashers, march
into
the breach, into the
breach—where
the god waits
in
the center of the fire—
O
cringe & tears of mothers
&
fathers again, again
anguish
of women & young men,
march
for oil, march for
flags,
march for Hussein,
march
for Bush, march for
God,
march for right,
march
for money, march for
smoke
of burning bodies,
march.
Fireball in the
Clouds
the soft snow floats thru
tight-packed buds & flaming
stems. shadows
gesture
&
talk of ecology. bits of brain,
strands of veins, cling to their
words, unseen.
spectres
glide in corridors,
line up at windows & whisper about
the weather—phones ring,
secretaries coo & yakk—a red mist
descends & settles over every-
thing,
unseen. protestors
& flag wavers shout in rivers of
blood
& oil that also engulf taxis,
hydrants,
passing buses—
hands raised to flaming clouds,
a
drunken man stumbles & reels
into
the gutter, empty yellow
eyes & open mouth facing fireball heaven.
peace,
peace, a million cry—
grenades
& flags parading from
open mouths.
soldiers at briefings
describe
mass murder in surgical
terms,
blue-eyed innocents parade
with flags at the Super Bowl as
gassed
Kurds & blasted Iraqis
mingle
in the silent screams
that rend tender springtime’s
sleeping
buds. O fleeting doves,
O
soft snow, O delicate
curve of wild berry, O sleeping babe
bombed
with dreams, what briefings
await
you in the nether world?
Below the
Headlines
below the photo of Cheney & Powell
grinning with a Bart Simpson statuette,
a
surgeon in
children’s
legs & arms by candlelight,
no
anesthetic; takes blood from one
to
give to another, praying the unknown
types
are right. the procession continues:
old
& young men, bomb-battered women
with
babes, faces ripped by shrapnel.
some
die for lack of medicine,
clean
water, some from the cold night
filled
with sirens & bombs & wailing.
Ghazal for the
Coming Spring
broken men march with bleeding ears,
guns
trained on their backs, glistening.
here
tanks & launchers burned, masses of
corpses
flew & fell, ripped & stinking:
here
graves mass—open jaws & sockets
of
skulls tell no hero’s story nor sing
where
blood ran into sand & sank,
where
rain & shamal remake the land daily:
passing
caravans tell & retell a silken
story
& pilgrimage sums a lifetime’s hope.
women
of
&
burning wellheads blacken the sky;
across
the world, old men dream in
starlit
silence among lilacs budding early.
El Mozote
Abrams & Bosworth could not remember
those
days when they took over
in
Human Rights, at State. Amaya, hiding
in a
tree, watched the soldiers kill
her
children & put them to the torch.
in
one house, the floor was blood-soaked,
most
of the dead, children. “this . . .
could
have led to the unravelling
of
the
expansion
of
in
La Joya, Lopez came home by night
to
find his wife & 6 kids shot to death.
perhaps
a thousand dead: Reagan certified
human
rights. refugees returned
to
the abandoned town years later
to
say Mass for the long-neglected dead.
two
men drag a limp & headless corpse thru
piles
of rubble, body parts, puddles of blood
as
in hills above some mother’s son cross
himself,
dumps another missile to mortar:
Karadzic
claims the people shot their own
to
get NATO involved—he says this straight-
faced,
reasons lined up like body parts
in
death wagons to justify genocide:
let
lost howling innocents, eyeless
men
& women, butchered grandmothers
crying
for a simple morning market stroll
wake
in his own grandchildren’s tears,
fill
his nightly dreams—let him wake
in
his own bed of fire & learn mercy at last.
let
let
the mountains fill with singing birds
&
farmers come again to market,
the
changing seasons herald miracles.
let
old women teach ancient customs
to
babes again; let prophets lay blessings—
let
dreams walk in open air free of terror,
now
lost & too long smoking in a living tomb.
February 25, 1994
howl
of hundreds
shot
in the back
at
the patriarch’s tomb
scorches
this
red
dawn. lovers wake
from
fragile dreams
&
quiet sighs to
stricken
mothers,
angry
sons with stones,
uncles,
grandfathers
in
tears. who can
sum
hopes & sorrows in
a
single human face?
hundreds
forever
lost
to us now, how
many
more before
the
butchery subsides
over
these sainted bones?
The Job
years later, he’d disgorge monthly:
searching swamps & paddies for the dead,
eyes in treetops for snipers,
he’d reach thru muck & gassy water
in tropical heat:
skin slid from arms like sausage casings,
arms & legs pulled loose from bloated bellies—