This Way 1 · Smith

FORGOTTEN

I am addressing you children’s children
I am addressing you to tell you
what I have forgotten.

I have forgotten the ending of war,
war to end war, the great war we never asked for
never asked for in the way anyone could say
“you asked for it.” We were clever, we waited
We said, “You asked for it, so here it is.”
Here it is a hundred thousand dead from one bomb,
one more bomb, another hundred thousand.
A hundred hundred thousand saved in two days,
two bombs so we said.

The ending of war.

But I forget about Korea ,
I forget Korea was a police action
I forget their policemen were called soldiers
I forget our soldiers were called policemen
I forget two million policemen KIA
I forget what we won in Korea
I forget Korea is still divided, brother against brother,
I forget, I have forgotten

I cannot remember Vietnam
I cannot remember napalm burning children
I cannot remember American soldiers killing children
I cannot remember children killing American soldiers
I cannot remember My Lai
I cannot remember who won in Vietnam
I cannot remember if their deaths were worth it.
I cannot remember if all deaths aren’t our deaths.
I cannot remember.

fornication
oral sex
roseola infantum
genital herpes
original sin
terminal cancer As
Time Goes By
every man for himself but there is
no way out.

In the forgetting is the begetting

I was distracted from Iraq
from the dead children
from the dead mothers and fathers
from the dead Americans
from the dead Iraqis
from the dead weapons of mass destruction
from the dead American thinking,

distracted from Afghanistan
from the dead
from the dead
from the dead.

I have forgotten:

Jack Gant* said, “everybody dies.”

Jack McGuane

*Jack Gant is the character played by Audie Murphy** in the movie No Name on the Bullet. **Audie Murphy received twenty-eight decorations from three countries in WWII for killing Germans.

 

EVERYBODY DIES

We hide our self-forgiving ways
And failures, and disguise
As best we can in dull cliches
Our blunders with our lies.

We plead for one anothers' praise
And plot for every prize
As proof of what that praise displays
With ploys The Prince supplies.

We plant and plow our works and days,
And harvest what denies
Denials in a well-wrought phrase
Or well-placed word's surprise.

We occupy our own malaise
Attempting to revise
The law that everyone obeys:
Everybody dies.

Marcus Bales

 

AUTUMN LEAVES

Leave me not in love and truth
Leaves me not at all

Leave my loss its soft misuse
Leaves my foreskin small

Leave my lost belief in youth
Leaves my use in thrall

Leave my use in used abuse
Leaves me moist of all

Steven B. Smith

 

YO BONE

Yo, bone... a-goin'
(where no bone
atones) keep
a-goin'! UB doin'
Good!

Eli P. Cimota

Slices of Dead · Lady Smith