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Open Poetry #50
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icebox
Member Elite
since 2003-05-03
Posts 4383
in the shadows

0 posted 2020-11-11 08:54 PM



Fishing With Grenades (a repost for those who never knew and those who can forget)


We started out as boys of prey
believing what we'd learned,
some not even twenty
mostly poor with nothing earned,
others born to plenty
from worlds I wished I never knew;
obscenities the common glue
that held our worlds together
as we'd learned to stay alive.

We hated everything about the place,
boots,
food,
mud,
crud that stuck eyelids together,
weather,
newsies, amateurish boorish fools
buffoons with cameras,
tape recorder spools, whiskey up the ass,
white skin round eyed nurses only sleeping with the brass.

I had it easy
making ends meet on common ground
in the jungle with the bloods,
they hated all the snowflakes  
but I hated everyone,
we started young and frightened
using ordnance like toys;
some were bagged up early flying home to tears and flowers,
the lucky ones were tagged;
all were bits and pieces
returned to empty joys.

The rest of us stopped being boys
a tour or two ago,
tucked our fears into our dreams and didn't really sleep.
Nightmares came like boom-boom girls
loud with lots of flash.
I grew to be something else between human and a man
who'd lost the fear of dying on blood trails in the bush,
later I replaced it with fears of going home;
even that got washed away until where I was
was all I'd ever known.

We learned it don't mean nothin'
to get by the best you can,
watch the ghosts come at you
and sometimes let them pass,
check the tracer colors
red could be OK
but green means someone's zeroed on your ass.

I don't make friends;
they always die and I hate them when they do.
Pass the shotgun here my man
we're back alive again;
play the music loud and clear
to hear above the ringing in my ears.
Anybody hungry?
Put a good edge on your blades.
Wake up Doc,
lets build a fire,
I feel like fishing with grenades.


©2003, 2009, 2013, 2017, 2020 by icebox


© Copyright 2020 icebox - All Rights Reserved
Marchmadness
Member Rara Avis
since 2007-09-16
Posts 9271
So. El Monte, California
1 posted 2020-11-11 09:03 PM



Sad slice of life...Haunting.

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