My Stab At Recruiting

My Stab at Recruiting


by Bob Hicok


The all volunteer
unarmored drop-out
meth-head accepting
army, be all



you can be dead
here and slow or swifter
in the sand, poor black
white chicanas



need jobs, who doesn’t
like bread
with their shrapnel
in the morning, I feel



a draft coming, a daft
numbing of sense,
can you dig it,
your fox hole



ain’t foxy, mama
don’t let your babies
John Hancock
for the man, you



the man, I the man,
all this manliness
gets you in the shit
and shit-canned, IED

deceased or pushing up,
is it the strip-teasing
of daisies tells us
deploy me, re-deploy me



not or Congress, an act of,
enact love in what you do
and don’t shoot
until you see the rights



of their eyes
to have it, life
liberty and the pursuit of,
I don’t know, breath, more fiber.


Bob Hicok 2oo8
Published in Ploughshares