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Another friend has died
today,
another in a long and distinguished
line.
We'll grimly call it "deceleration
sickness,"
when the red-rimmed shock goes
away.
But the county coroner will
mine
the site and say, "massive blunt force
trauma,"
and "shock force evisceration," and
mostly
"decapitation." For they very often
lose
their heads, that lose their
lives
in
fighters.
There'll be a ceremony soon
enough,
we'll all be there, we'll all
be
tall and solemn, try not to
see
the woman cry, his wife or
lover,
his sister or his
mother,
in her lovely summer
dress
and dark
sunglasses.
She cannot think it over. The
kids won't
cry, they're still too young.
Unless it's since
their mother's sobbing.
They don't
understand: Da's not coming home
today,
not ever. But we won't cry, nor even
wince
not until the missing man
formation passes by - the four of
them
in
fighters.
We might even laugh at those
we don't
know, that die by some
buffoonery.
The grasping sea knows
many
and leaves us only flags and empty
caskets.
But for the ones we know we
won't,
not ever. Each time a little
part
of us dies with them. We lose a little
heart,
each time we lose a little less.
Or else we wouldn't have, in the
fullness
of our time, any
left
for
fighters.
We always make the burial,
they've Navy flights.
Pittsburgh this time
time, the last
was Huntington, West
Virginia.
Or was it Texas? There are so many
states,
so many sites. In starched
whites
and shaking knees, we'll carry him to
the gaping
ground, salute while rifles CRACK
(I nearly
shit myself the first time). Some
bastard
will play taps. We'll stand there
tall,
while clutching at our caps. And
try
our very hardest not to cry
again, since we are men,
grown men, who all of
us
fly
fighters.
And then we'll get us several
in a car
and send us quickly to the closest
bar,
and drink our throbbing skulls into a
stupor,
and talk about the man we put away
today
and all the great things he had
done,
and all the women he had
known,
and wasn't it a pity? And the next
day
we'll feel shitty. And the next day after
that.
But on the day that follows
after,
we'll be up
again,
in fighters.
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