honest/clean
Carlos Andres Gomez
War Poetry Contest 2008 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
"I love it. I love the fight. It's just I don't think we should be fighting in that country. I don't think we should be fighting a war there for any reason whatsoever. But when it actually happens, for those few brief seconds it's—it's honest, it's clean. There's no politics involved when it actually happens."
—Joseph Hatcher, 1st Infantry Division, U.S. Army
(February 2004-March 2005, Iraq)
let me be
a mold of soft foam
inside reinforced silicone
let me be
a soggy piece of plywood
nailed across another
let me be
a 50 cm scrap
of folded cotton fabric
an inch and a half
of worn brown leather
a simple grip of two plates
of poplar wood or stainless steel
something made to hold
someone
or be held
or worshipped
and nothing else
encase me in iron
feed me fuel and gunpowder
make me machine sharp
fingerprint me cutting edge
a smart bomb
a docile land mine
not this vicious human need
don't make me this clouded, raw heart
all conflict and contradiction
all horror and beauty
let me be
a mold of soft foam
inside reinforced silicone
but not the upper arm
attached to it
not the soldier saluting
above the flag-encased coffin
of his best friend
don't call me prosthesis
as the ghost arm salutes
against his right temple
let me be
a soggy piece of plywood
nailed across another
not a cross
fitted with crude nails and screws
not a symbol of religion or belief
not lighter fluid ignited with a blow torch
not the man shouting to a gathered group
not the pale sheet hiding his cleft palate scar
the nightmares of his alcoholic father
the torment of poverty in Neshoba County, Mississippi
not the stutter he found hate to overcome
let me be
a 50 cm scrap
of folded cotton fabric
let my color be incidental
neither signifier nor signified
neither red nor blue
neither Athens Park blood
nor Eastside crip
not the symbol of family
a fatherless son finds
not the tears he hides
the hands he once used
for break-dancing and poems
let me be
an inch and a half
of worn brown leather
not a belt lashing
a little girl's face
not the father holding it
not those nightmares of his father
holding his little boy hand in scalding hot water
for forgetting his backpack in 4th grade
not the 41-year-old man
that still wets his bed
is still afraid of the dark
let me be
simple
a simple grip of two plates
of poplar wood or stainless steel
attached to a large blade
or a heavy clip of steel tipped rounds
but not the hand
hewing the sugarcane
hacking up a neighbor
the shaking finger about to fire
a woman dressed in a black hijab
in the scope
about to pull a white flag
from her shopping bag
as the 2nd bullet exits
her 4th vertebra
let me be
absolute
that woman's final breath
a heavy release
from the heavens
flood rain like sobbing
a god
that never has to answer
for itself
I want to die an idea
a desperate myth in the sky
as the whole world kneels
not sure
if this is their last day
on earth
