‘Vital stats’, ‘The Purloined Hearts Of Southern Command’, & ‘Not Joes’
Artist - Christine Simpson, www.christinesimpsonphotoart.com
Vital stats
Perhaps in the next war
we can put every soldier's face
on a bubblegum card.
Force civilians to collect them,
thousands of new ones every day,
and issue update stickers
for all the wounded,
the missing in action,
all the dead, the deserted,
captured,
the executed.
I love stickers
as honors won,
medals given,
ribbons earned.
The public, (that is,
the non-combatant parts of the world),
may sicken of the fight
just a little quicker.
I suppress the idea
because it would really be perverted,
in true war, to where we would
only collect faces of the enemy.
waiting for 'our' official updated dead,
wounded, or captured stickers,
we would take the 'others'
to poke out their eyes with dart tips,
burn their faces with flame,
boil the disfigured cards to mush...
which we would use for magic spells
and prayers for death and plagues
and our teeth would rot out by the fistfuls
from the bile we poison ourselves on!
How easily war gets away from us.
The Purloined Hearts Of Southern Command
Ms Hometown Rose
was recruited by error.
She received the draft notice
via mistake of her
shortened surname.
An unnatural twist that
birthed empathy.
She sent her photo
to the first Joe
who showed it around.
Naturally.
She got other letters.
Naturally.
Her picture showed
a real honest to goodness goddess,
a stateside beauty queen with
girl next door give-a-damn.
She kept copies of her letters
from over three hundred Joe's
under her bed, in files, boxes,
on her side of the attic.
In time, they would all
come home, or die there.
In time, they would all forget.
Naturally.
Beauty queens get buried
with all the other memories of the war,
all the things real life sweethearts
and wives might not understand.
Her letters died in the fires
of a jealous ex-husband
who never served in war,
or, as she puts it,
just never served.
Not Joes
In a war with some name,
we, the not-Joe's, did not go.
Never went. Never knew.
It was a test given
and not taken,
graduation held but not
attended, an
initiation of fire
not felt.
Most of the generation
un burned
un scarred
un healing
marches on.
The sound of the missing drummer
flying the blank flag,
vacant colors,
without declaration
or distinction,
knowing what it is
to be left alive.
Burdened with virginal courage,
un expose guts,
un tried fortitude.
Lucky in the draft,
lucky in life,
we drink without the
grateful tastes
of the seasoned survivor.
Unworthy of the actual
survivor's guilt
denied to civilians,
we live our
non-veteran lives, and
most likely meet our fates
with non-valor.
Unless, we do our duty
to cherish, cradle, and
deliver on this peace dividend,
paid for by the dead,
and those who's duty
was not to die.
Mark Kessinger was born in Huntington WV, attended college at Cleveland State University, lived in Oklahoma City and now resides in Houston TX. He is a two-year recipient of a creative writing scholarship from CSU, a founding member and president of the Houston Council of Writers, and former editor of Voices from Big Thicket. His poetry has appeared in many publications and four anthologies.
