I limit my lines with rhyme and meter
not because I like the scansion or tune
but so I do not burden my readers
with movie-reel deaths of the third platoon.

Had I the freedom to write uncensored,
I might paint—Smith’s helmet, dotted with dents
that soon became holes, or Jones, who I heard
sobbed at the end—in minds of innocents.

No gentleman wants to hear eulogies
detailing ev’ry hit through skin and skull
and near misses bringing God to his knees,
tortured, choosing whose bayonet to dull,

which side will wave empty victory like
flags colored with the body’s humors, red,
men forgetting the days they ran from Reich
with comrades clinging to their forearms, dead.

In ten syllables I could not convey
the horror we witnessed parading with guns.
Truthfully, we are better off this way—
for what mother wants to think of her sons

rotting, hanging from strings in foreign trees,
days since the sound of planes greeted them,
boys with tears dripping like milk from daisies
that wither away from top to cut stem.

Better she pocket a folded-up flag,
the stars, symbolic, facing heavenwards,
dab at her eyes with a ratty washrag,
and stash her sons under the floorboards

so she can think about them sometimes, when
she’s lonely and sad and needing her boys.
Solemn, I pick up my war-trophy pen
and write chants sung as a new troop deployed—

on repeat forever, born of their boots,
easily broken as Catch-22,
marching in rhythm ‘long dangerous routes,
ignoring their trembling lips, turned blue.