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icebox
Member Elite

since 2003-05-03

Posts 4383
in the shadows

0 posted 2020-05-27 02:23 AM

When you were making your Memorial Day plans, did you consider consider; the Day is not about barbecue and beer:

Fishing With Grenades

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 flowers,
lucky ones were tagged;
all were bits and pieces
returned to tears and 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 a 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

2islander2
Member Ascendant

since 2008-03-12

Posts 6825
by the sea

1 posted 2020-05-27 11:23 AM

impressive work, words "awake" ? the mind
yann

Temptress

Moderator

Member Rara Avis

since 1999-06-15

Posts 7136
Mobile, AL

2 posted 2020-05-28 07:47 AM

I don't think that the impact of war on those who served and lived or died is recognized until the stories are heard. The stories definitely must be told. Those who are left are tasked with telling it, especially a writer. Your description is sobering. Thank you.

"Maybe that's the way I should go
Straight into the mouth of the unknown"

Shinedown

Paul Wilson

Member Elite

since 2002-07-07

Posts 4711
United States

3 posted 2020-05-29 12:03 PM

Icebox...So glad you reposted this somehow in the memories in my mind of which I have less of these days I never read it till now.
Some memories never go away and that's a bad thing, but then some memories get lost in yesterday and that's a good thing, Enjoyed very much...Paul

~~To share my poems with you is to share my heart with you~~
Paul

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