Day Of The Pariah--1977

Day of the Pariah--1977

Bogie and the Duke never made

a war movie together, and that’s

a damned shame; it would have

been a proper piece of propaganda.

War is always so clean
there on the silver screen.
Explosions are fireball rainbows
and the bodies fall from the sky
like the litter of angels, while
tramping troops start toes tapping;
great polished machines of war
on wheels and tracks of steel
groan and roll, clang and bang,
crushing foreign soil
and foreign devils beneath them--
actors brandishing toy guns,
reciting clever lines of bellicose bullshit,
wearing the pancake masks
of hollywood heroes, their faces
and hands smeared thick with blood
created from corn syrup and tomato paste.

But damn the eyes of the demagogues
who flickered those fallacious frames
there in darkened theaters for
the battalions of boys who bought
the message of patriotic brutality
and found themselves
in Southeast Asia
with khaki ammo belts wrapped
around their lean waists
and real bullets passing hot over their helmets,
cursing at them in Vietnamese and Chinese.

The Freedom Birds, those innocuous
reassigned jet liners, took them there--
and for those who survived
Tour 365, brought them home again
with the steaming blood of the Orient
still clinging to their swollen lips,
and the sickly sweet stench of the Nam
still living strong in their armpits--

home, to work in their Dad’s hardware
store, or on their uncle’s cattle ranch,
or on the nightshift in a steel mill,
or driving a taxi, or swinging a hammer,
or flipping burgers--afraid to sleep,
jumping every time a truck backfired.

They remembered so clearly how proud
their fathers had been, those WWII
and Korean War vets, sending them
off to war, carrying on a legacy of honor--
and now within arm’s reach of their
fathers, their only embrace
was cold silence.

There it was.
There were no parades,
no handshakes, no free beers,
no easy bank loans, no welcome
home dinners, no sweetheart waiting,
no talk of valor, no victory barbecues;
nothing but society’s spittle dripping down
the front of their dress uniforms.

War created warriors
walking the wet streets
of every city in America--
hundreds of thousands of them,
watching, waiting, year after year;
angry clear into their bones,
their fists clenched,
their minds still scrambled
from that Soc Trang overload;
living with pain, embracing it
like it was an aphrodisiac,
crapping bayonets
and vomiting violence;
an army moving under the radar,
weary but still unwilling
to lay down all their weapons,
whispering to each other
where the caches were,
and who the enemy was.

Glenn Buttkus October 2010

Listed as #42 over on Magpie Tales 38

Listen to the author read this poem.