Heroes Haven

HEROE'S HAVEN

By the bus load
they rolled into Balboa,
wounded,
disemboweled,
their asses shot off,
carried roughly on taunt khaki stretchers.

Weary eyes
that wore a planet's pain;
their heads shaved,
their underwear stenciled,
their blood spilling in little puddles
in quiet green hallways.

Cripples all,
they limped and wheeled,
hobbled and crept
through all of the limbs
of the gray octopus
military hospital;
within wire fences,
beneath post card palms,
gathering up gobs
of their old selves.

Metal and plastic and airplane glue
became tendons.
Canes, crutches, and chrome prosthetics
became new legs.
Empty pinned shirt sleeves
caught the ocean breeze
like sad May pole streamers,
flapping
a melancholy tune.

There were white jagged scars
running over the bodies of men
like angry dead veins,
hard to hide,
especially
those inside.

The doctors, nurses, and corpsmen
raged through the sterile wards,
and their insane anger was leveled
like a loaded rifle
at the patients.

For Christ's sake,
the patients;
that dull thick red river of broken men;
damn goldbrick sonsabitches.
Make sure that those lazy bastards
shined their shoes,
and cut all their hair,
just scrape their heads bald;
filthy germ-ridden hair.
Geld them,
stab them,
break and slice them;
deny them comfort,
harass them,
give them pain
and then give them aspirin,
only aspirin.

They must get their minds right.
Shake them from their fitful slumber,
and stand them at attention.
They are just meat,
just
infinitesimal maimed expendable insignificant protoplasmic service numbers,
and they are not useful
when bedridden.
Those slackers must not stay.
They must go back,
back to the front...
they must.

The men and boys of pain
absorbed the anger,
heard the words,
suffered the scalpel,
took the aspirin,
shined their boots,
cut and re-cut their hair,
stood at rigid attention,
and they did not
forget.



Glenn Buttkus 1968

Posted as #5 over on dVerse Poets

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