The Lighter Side of JzB

Here you will find photos, poetry, and possibly some light-hearted foolishness. For the Heavier Side
of JzB
see my other blog,
Retirement Blues. (There be dragons!)

I claim copyright and reserve all rights for my original material of every type and genre.


Every day visits*
From Moose, Goose, and Orb Weaver
All seized by Haiku


"Why moose and goose?" you may ask. Back on 2/04/13 Pirate wrote a haiku with an elk in it, and I responded with
one with a moose and then included him every day. A few days later in comments Mystic asked "Where's the goose?"
So I started including her with this post on 2/07. A week later on the 14th, Mark Readfern
asked for and received a spider. The rest is history.

*Well, most days, anyway. Grant me a bit of poetic license.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

My War Poem

Update 9/02/14:  I'm a day late to this prompt from The Garden, where Magaly asks if we have a favorite writing place.  I do not.  I have composed verse, prose and music in my head while driving on the expressway and while falling asleep [or more realistically tossing and turning] in bed at night.  Once in the white heat of inspiration I madly scribbled part of a story on a hotel room note pad while sitting in a food court at a mall in Toronto.

It's an Open Link Monday entry, with an opportunity to "link one of your poems, regardless of theme or format or date of publication." Recently I was rummaging through the archive and remembered this from a couple years back.
______________________

I was reading the chapter on war poems in Michael Bugeja's book last night and thought I didn't have a war poem in me.  Then I went to bed and composed this on my pillow before going to sleep.


THE GENERATION OF GREATNESS

We call them America's
Greatest generation
My father my uncles all those
Other men I worked with when
I started my first job in 1968
Were drunks

Years later Jimmy Carter would
Lobby against the 3 martini
Lunch these men lived on
Ice jammed into a short
Tumbler filled to the brim
With gin

Not so for my father a shot
And a beer man of simpler tastes
Kesslers and Strohs could
Get you just as drunk
Though maybe not quite
As fast

If they also serve who only stand
And wait what greater service it
Must be to get shipped across the Atlantic
Four fifths of the way back to
The place your mother escaped so many
Years earlier

He never told me what he did there
Nor of any British girls He might have
Americanized certainly not combat
Nor flying bombing missions
Maybe it was some dumb desk job with
A typewriter.

He told me once that to cure
The boredom he'd go into London
With his buddies on a Saturday night
And watch the bombs fall but
This might well have been
A lie

The booze was true though Gin
Whiskey Beer pick your medication
Anesthetic poured onto the
Scars crusting over deep
Old war wounds that never
Really healed 



6 comments:

  1. Very good! Not the type of subject to "enjoy", but I "appreciated" it.

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  2. I think being part of war means a lot of waiting.. being bored is one thing for real.. and certainly the bottle could be one way to get by. I think you push a point we'd rather forget... and yes I can understand that, but it's one portion of what created a generation....

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  3. It's sad to see how addiction becomes the nightmare fighter for so many... sad and pitiful, for then I see them having to deal with two different nightmares at the same time.

    I wonder if those who tried to drown the screams in liquid ever know how things look from the outside. My nightmares and I speak through words, sometimes they get extra scary, but I guess I've been one of the lucky ones... one who can still live with yesterday... most days.

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  4. You bravely take on a modern myth of perfection, personally, profoundly, honestly.

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  5. wow. this is great, and ... "this might well have been a lie." that is some heavy truth. love your poem.

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JzB