The Boys Between Us

-Kiai o ka lewa (Guardians of the Upper Realms)

Would that this poem might submit
the wondrous headline there,
the problematic endings
and beginnings where
things go round and round
but who would believe
the announcement of sharp
air in the lungs below zero
tonight in North Dakota
and how that made my heart
begin to bleed and rejoice
as you drew your breath in
and stood up to walk
to where you are right now,
so far away from the past two
weeks, the first furlough
and this unorthodox,
sentimentally muslim Christmas.
I put that tree up for you
to make it seem more
like the movies and feel
more like a dream,
the real logistics
of history, ours and theirs.
There is fury in my heart
for you son
with whom no blankets
were sent, no glass tears
delivered and your friend
shows up to this house
a few hours after you left,
this house that feels like those first
few moments after a funeral.
He tried to hide
behind the pencil thin
brown-like-a-foreigner body
girlfriend of his, standing
at the door ringing the bell
thinking he could surprise me,
but I knew he'd come.
They all belong to me son,
your friends, their lives
and their deaths.
Her little promise ring
was too big for her finger,
this great big love
you kids know so much about
running between them,
his head shaved and skateboard
literate bandana (paisley)
wrapped as he always did it
back when he fainted
and slumped to the floor
like some people do
when they see their own
blood. I asked him
what was next
and the new infantry
is all he understands
with the skate park fading,
his first pack of smokes
you bought him when
you turned eighteen,
that's Dustin for you,
he doesn't look too bad
without all that hair
and his neck is thick, muscular,
like yours and everyone else's,
you can tell what he's been thinking.
I'm glad I watched
All's Quiet but not really,
not when a dead boy's guitar
is slung over a handle in
your old room
and Mary's brother's coat is
tucked into your duffle
alongside your orders.
Her parent's honored you,
don't forget that,
John's been dead for five years now
but his coat, son. That
is their son's coat, the son
that they lost when he
careened his brand new car
into a rocky crag on his way
back from Rocky Point
just after he'd made pilot.
Not sure if they hoped
to curse or bless you buddy.
And Jeremy shot himself
just last year and we all know
it was drugs that got him,
same war, different strategy
in the disingenuous battle
for a person's soul and then, their body.
Your voice shook when you volunteered
a eulogy up at St. Pat's,
seventeen years old is too
young to offer such a speech
but you did great that day,
the whole parish sobbed
and we aren't even Catholic.
Neither of them perished
from an IED
neither of them is buried
where they died
but they are still gone
and as gone as you are right
now, that first call home
is the hardest because the story
keeps on going.
It is nightfall on New Year's Day
and I play Jeremy's guitar
to the tune

bury me son, t'abreneh in'sha'allah,
please bury me with your heart on fire,
just don't bury what I've said.

I'm just a woman you know
but I've seen war from
several of its infinite angles
and I want to tell you
it looks different from every
one so far but I know
the last look we take
might be the one
that lasts the longest.
The war, son, is in man's bones,
it troubles the arteries
and fills the heart with steam,
purples this mind with agony
and drags our legs
like a grizzly bear on a rampage
whether we go or not
we drink the elixir of Free Will.
It takes girls and makes
them women, adultresses and widows,
draws lines around our eyes
and mouths, leaves boys
without mothers, fathers,
sisters and cousins - it places
us in perspective, drives
certain people to drink
and others to flee,
or like Dustin's girl
she signs up too damn it
because times haven't changed
and my own mother
peeled and placed bandages
at Bethesda Naval hospital in 1943
because times were tough then too.
If you'd have asked her
it was her culminating factor,
the one that drew and colored
the rest of her life, some
sort of redemption and reminder
when my dad got liquored up
and sang Lili Marlene. Everyone
looks good in uniform mister,
just not all of the time.

They sat there on my couch
this afternoon, he took
his bandana off and twisted it
over and over and over,
his mom told me he's afraid
of both things: killing and killing.
We all are.

We made polite conversation
for three whole hours,
he leaves tomorrow,
to "Misery" as they say
and its cold there too
but by May he'll be
shipping out and we know where,
just don't know if or how or who.
I knocked him on the head
with my knuckles
as he left, the same way
I did the day he passed out
and I tried to wake him up
as I washed his little cut
a couple of years back
when all we cared about
was whether or not
I had enough stew
to feed them all, your friends,
all your precious friends
who to me were
chosen especially for you
and more precious than gold.
For old time's sake I rapped
him on his hard head, for you
and him and Jeremy and John,
for my father and my brother,
for my mother and my uncle,
for the citizens of the earth
and those that have died
or who are dying today
and those being born,
for the rabbit I ran over outside
Benson on the way up
to send you on your way,
you and your Mary snuggling
in the back seat and crying,
for Mary, poor Mary and your sisters,
for your father who has delegated
to me more than I am capable
of delivering,
and for the havelina I shot last
night on New Year's Eve with
the beebee gun I finally bought
you after all those years
I denied you one, and that impervious
beast looked at me as if to say
bug off and then sauntered away.
For our enemies and our friends.
For your cousin who thinks
the Marines will do for him
what my brother never could.
Yes, war puts us all into perspective
and it never stops and never will my little boy.
Strife is justice said Heraclitus
and I have to agree
but it depends on which side you are
and if you know you're on it.