A Soldier’s Pay
A Thank-you to Arms
Rod A. Walters
Published by Omega Man Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Rod A. Walters
ISBN 978-0-9700441-7-4
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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At the Intersection of Bradley and Eisenhower
They Shoot Movies, Don’t They?
Your great-great-great grandfather’s farm?
That Lobsterback setting fire to
His house, his barn
I shot him
Shot him, Poet
So his farm would live.
So here you are.
* * * * * * * *
My grandfather, I’ve been told,
Brought his musket to Cowpens.
No, wasn’t shot himself
Just got the ague
So they say, died
Nothin’ like that for me, tho’
Here I am in front of Petersburg and they say in a month we’ll be walkin’ over Bobby Lee’s hat but you know how those goddam’ officers lie anything to keep me here in this cold mud
but I really don’t care if you care,
Poet
Because, well, there you are.
* * * * * * * *
My grandpa died somewhere around Richmond,
so they say.
Why is there so much mud?
And why are they trying to kill me?
I’ve got a Kraut name, too,
Just like them.
I shot one yesterday and Sergeant Cummins said I did real good I fired three four times why couldn’t I have just put the sonofabitch away instead of watching him bleed gutted, drooling the sonofabitch the sonofabitch
Write that up better, Poet
* * * * * * * *
Well, baggin’ groceries isn’t so bad.
A livin’.
My grandfather died someplace
Between France and Germany,
So they say.
Got a picture of him, younger
Than both of us now,
But that’s the way things are.
And the way things were
As I remember
You was hunkered down
Thought you’r dead
And somewhere fifty feet off the ground
7
In Two Corps I saved your
Sorry ground-huggin’ ass
With thirty calibers of
Uncle Sam’s best production,
An umbrella of life-givin’ steel,
And you lived another day.
Just think about that –
You ain’t nothin’, Poet,
Without me.
Away little one, away off to bed
Or the Hessians will ride in to chop off your head
Pretty little toy soldiers
X-back uniform shirts
Two-inch, two-foot bayonets
Number twenty-two looks like
Number fourteen
One day numbers seventy-three,
Fifty-two, thirty-seven, and
Two dozen of their closest comrades
Mueller and Klaus
Brennan and Brandt
fell off the shelf and into
the new land, to farm
keep shop, fight Nazis
Shame on that poem!
No babies’ heads were ever cut.
Duty and honor never meant
Listening to obsessed generals,
Redneck soldier killers
We spent too much
On the stone for your resting place,
Killer
That tooth, jutting from China’s jaw
Not the world’s first gray
grit-for-tat scrimmage, only
first on daily newsreels,
won early by that
brittle Genius of Inchon,
rusted by his understanding of
the Oriental mind, missing only
the understanding of the Oriental mind.
Would that the most famous
Old Soldier had swiftly dashed away
rather than staying to fade.
What did we get in return,
besides the Ridgway cap and
Ridgway
and history’s first military fashion plate?
A boom economy once in
Deep kimch’i!
Yet, yet.
Fight someone who regards life so cheaply
(human waves at bargain price) and wonder,
How can we ever be friends?
Let’s play “Artist.”
Our canvas: miles and miles of green
Dark green, lightish green, shadow green,
Some darkish spots, and rumpled green,
Stretched left to right, ground to sky.
All our other colors are
Sky-dropped in an ampule of
hydrocarbon paint.
Skip, skip, bounce
Burst into a billowing brilliant yellow worm
Expanding through the spectrum’s manic half
An amorphous tiger burning bright
Spreading across the green-tree canvas,
Left to right, ground to sky
Subsiding first to the gray-smoke brown
Of canvas turning lifeless
And finally, in the distance,
Dollops of campfire marshmallow crispy black
of two bodies
welded together.
Hello, Congress!
(Damn if they didn’t make us a medal
for just showing up)
So, what have we here?
A picture –
‘scuze me, a rendering – of the
Fulda Gap, where The Threat
Never came, never would,
Except in the War College.
And here’s the same eagle,
Same old arrows, same olive branch.
Wonder if They
(can’t say “enemy” any more)
Have a cold war medal too?
Full employment for medalsmiths.
Then again, we did hold Them
For fifty-one years
So They couldn’t hit anyone else.
Held ‘em with sword sheathed.
Hello, Congress!
So once again
We locked arms and protected you.
Thank you for the cold medal.
Your folks were always worth it.
Brush the dust from the stone
on which there remained no space to
inscribe the President’s words and
George Washington’s wishes
which no one reads anyway, in front of which stands no one but widow, child, who can only rock to and fro in dazed grayness
Then brush the dust back
Line up
Shut up
Chew on a morning report
Day long
Bad song
Drink off the day for the sport
Grab rope
Grab soap
Cinderella run home to the fort
Dress lines
No signs
You can kiss your squared-off cohort
Bayonet drill
No thrill
Find a way to get outta’ the court
Dirt road
Grass mowed
Post Engineer is a wart
Rifle run
Burnin’ sun
Tired of bein’ this sort
Run rifle
No trifle
Jes’ keep the dam’ thing at high port
H.Q.
Officer stew
Scrambled eggs ‘n stuffed shirts by the quart
Wrong place
Wrong face
M.P.’s come be my escort
M.P.
You’ll see
You really caught the wrong face
Slog, boot
Drop, shoot
Too tired to be a dam’ ace
White flag
Dog tag
Tied to the boot just in case
At ease
Doggie please
No boots gonna’ be a disgrace
Bugle call
All fall
Into the emperor’s pace
Double bunk
Triple bunk
Dogface don’t need no dam’ space
Hard bed
Pounding head
World jes’ get offa’ my case
Run stop
Shell drop
Fit the left leg in a brace
Stack arms
Sound alarms
Give the old boots a last lace
Rum dum
Hum drum
Drum the line outta’ this place.
Line up…
Mr. President,
Say I get The Call
I authenticate The Code,
your order
Before I help destroy half the world
On your behalf
I break the law and call you
a fool & so forth --
A court-martial amid the embers?
Kafka coughs, and
you would still be a fool,
Mr. President.
Sometimes he has troubles
You know, life’s difficult things:
speaking well
getting along
tying his shoes
You can take your liberties with him, Brother:
Personal failure is no big deal