14345144 (Veterans Day 2011)

Memory's a live gun
And these iron sights
Can take a deer from two hundred yards.

You say my memory's failing,
But I remember every blade of Korean grass.
I remember hills and ditches,
Enormous warts of earth,
Hard and silent challenge
To a disappearing sun.

You say my memory's failing,
But I remember faces you can't imagine.
Cold and friendly faces,
Faces gleaming with sweat and fear,
Faces gone utterly slack in a thousandth of a second,
Serene and infinite,
Christened with a shameless blotch of red and brown.

I remember death, coy but insistent,
Pleading in casual euphemisms
Until at last I resigned myself
And flung her meaninglessly at a thousand silhouettes.
I remember numbers grown to irrelevance,
Lead-catching chorus for my attempt
At bailing out a lake.

I remember mortars like a premonition,
Whistling with the breath of Ezekiel,
Snapping a wide canvas whip
Threaded through with the itching wool of night space.

You say my memory's failing,
But I remember the sound of bullets,
Swift and soft percussion
of overripe apples falling in the summer heat.
I remember the irresistible approach and touch,
Silken finger on flesh,
Like being kissed by a hammer.

I remember ice like mercy
Lancing through flesh, bone, and three generations,
Carving an eternal, hollow heiroglyph
Into stone souls.

I remember the drying of the Pacific,
The shrinking of the earth,
Korean relics asserting themselves in Carolina
Like a phantom limb.
I remember the placing of hands in the glyph in my soul,
Hands soft and assertive -
A final resignation to home.

You say my mind is crumbling,
But I see you like never before.
I see on you a thousand slack-jawed faces
That never will be.
I see the hole in the stone.
I see the trophy I claimed from death.
You cannot tell me I'm disapppearing.
I am in you eternally,
Resting in your shoulder,
Carved in

Like a rune

In stone.