Casualties
Johnmichael Simon
War Poetry Contest 2010 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
Everything has to be lined up
exactly in its place, no deviation allowed
even the minutest deviation is obnoxious,
unacceptable, you know what I mean
utterly in line, like soldiers
People aren't lined up, most people
go off in obscene angles, they're careless
don't give a shit about rules or order,
anything's good enough for them
that's why I hate people
they live their lives as if there is no
master plan, that's why there are wars
and different religions and languages
and flags and things, you know what I mean,
untidy
I know what you're thinking but you're wrong,
dead wrong. Look at them, raping the planet
hardly any ozone left, everywhere full of
fumes and pollution, all kinds of dogshit
all over the place. Nobody picks up dogshit
these days. What about the weather; either
floods or drought, fuck the planet, go on
drive your smoke belching vehicles all over it
so you see I'm not so fucking crazy, right? Exactly
No deviation—otherwise we're all bound for
extinction. You know why I hate them?
Nobody understands, they're deaf, all deaf
every last one of those motherfuckers
You know why I'm running away?
There was this Nam girl, young like a rosebud,
like some furry young animal, timid fawn eyes,
she was the only one, I swear, she touched me
in places I didn't know I had—the only one
I could have learned not to hate
But one day I saw her move
just a fraction, a millimeter out of line,
you wouldn't notice it even, but I saw it,
saw through her. She wasn't lined up, she was
one of them. I swear I could have killed her
on the spot, that's what you are thinking, isn't it?
But I left her, came here instead to be
on my own. If I'm the only lined up person
in the world, I'll stay on my own, forever
2.
Punctually as always we arrive
every second Tuesday at ten thirty
we descend from our battered Mercury
bottle of cordial and
smiling ham sandwiches
packed into brown paper bags
next to the photographs
of the family, magazines
cheap clean underwear
He is not on the picnic littered grass
not in the stained stairwell
smelling of urine and cracked paint
where the same empty eyed combatant stands
eternally masturbating in the corridor,
not in the deserted dining room
a few old slices of bread still on the peeling table
not in the TV room
where a single spectator stares
vacantly at a flickering screen
We find him in a tiny rancid room
two metal beds and his wheelchair
everything smelling of forgotten yesterdays,
our forced smiles unreturned
he stares through us shamefully
tears run dirty streams down his cheeks
reliving shells and shrapnel, blood and gore
he does not recognize us
We wheel him out to the grass
open the bags, the bottles, the photographs
he ignores them all
tears river from him dimly
seeing again his only movie
the battlefield
him, limbs smashed, stumbling
weapon torn from his grasp
jammed useless in the mud
The hour over we wheel him back
don't look at each other in the car
3.
The catheter is extracted
by means of a syringe
inserted into the rubber tube
which empties the liquid from the balloon
trapping it inside the bladder
enabling removal via the urethra
Like a skinned eel or dead fish
And how she had cried and remembered,
how he was before he was injured
in the war and sent back home
a relic, something to be laughed at
Or pitied, the subject of public house
humor, lying there the whole time trying to preserve
his dignity, remembering old times
when after her day shift at the hospital
They had gone dancing
Holding each other as close as bark
around a tree; now she was only needed
by all those old men in the ward
with their prostate and bladder problems
She felt cold and full of emptiness
tried to reach out to him in the bed
past the steady rhythm of his breathing
When he did not move
she hunched her back
placed her palms between her thighs
then tried to sleep
but no amount of comfort under blankets
could warm her up
4.
linoleum cutout soldiers
newspaper soldiers, folded into triangles,
rectangles with exhaust pipe arms, legs, marching,
marching into valleys, across borders
drums beating tattoos, marching, a rhythmic
cranking of un-oiled hinges, left right, left right,
marching, uniforms camouflaged with disjointed
slogans, marching, blind, stern faces
set in resolution, fear, smoke, shrapnel
blades whirling overhead, marching
marching, drums beating, Sousa,
Shostakovich, twisted twitching cavalry
chunks of bent and burning iron, Guernica,
marching, marching
tin soldiers, a child lies on a carpet
arranging riflemen, platoons, tanks, squadrons
mouthing military music, bang he says, bang
bang, soldiers fall, topple, bang, some continue
marching across the carpet
into his head, his dreams, fatherless,
shivering into marching dreams,
mother arranging flowers in a jam jar
