Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

For Eli 

Eli came back from Iraq

and tattooed a teddy bear onto the inside of his wrist.

Above that a medic with an IV bag,

above that an angel

but Eli says the teddy bear won’t live.

 

And I know I don’t know but I say, “I know.”

‘cause Eli’s only twenty-four and I’ve never seen eyes

further away from childhood than his,

eyes old with a wisdom

he knows I’d rather not have.

 

Eli’s mother traces a teddy bear onto the inside of my arm

and says, “not all casualties come home in body bags.”

 

And I swear,

I’d spend the rest of my life writing nothing

but the word light at the end of this tunnel

if I could find the fucking tunnel

I’d write nothing but white flags.

 

Somebody pray for the soldiers.

Somebody pray for what’s lost.

Somebody pray for the mailbox

that holds the official letters

to the mothers, fathers

sisters, and little brothers

of Michael 19... Steven 21... John 33.

How ironic that their deaths sound like bible verses.

 

The hearse is parked in the halls of the high school

recruiting black, brown and poor

while anti-war activists outside Walter Reed Army Hospital

scream “100, 000 slain,”

as an amputee on the third floor

breathes forget-me-nots onto the window pane.

But how can we forget what we never knew?

 

Our sky is so perfectly blue it’s repulsive.

Somebody tell me where God lives

‘cause if God is truth God doesn’t live here.

our lies have seared the sun too hot to live by.

There are ghosts of kids who are still alive

toting M16s with trembling hands

while we dream ourselves stars on Survivor,

another missile sets fire to the face in the locket

of a mother whose son needed money for college

and she swears she can feel his photograph burn.

 

How many wars will it take us to learn

that only the dead return?

the rest remain forever caught between worlds of

shrapnel shatters body of three year old girl to…

welcome to McDonalds can I take your order?

 

The mortar of sanity crumbling,

stumbling back home to a home that will never be home again.

Eli doesn’t know if he can ever write a poem again.

 

One third of the homeless men in this country are veterans. 

and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops

with pretty yellow ribbons

while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands.

 

Tell me, what land of the free

sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones

hones them like missiles

then returns their bones in the middle of the night

so no one can see?

Each death swept beneath the carpet and hidden like dirt,

Each life a promise we never kept.

 

Jeff Lucey came back from Iraq

and hung himself in his parents’ basement with a garden hose.

The night before he died he spent forty-five minutes on his father’s lap

rocking like a baby,

rocking like daddy, save me,

and don’t think for a minute he too isn’t collateral damage

in the mansions of Washington.

They are watching them burn and hoarding the water.

Which senators’ sons are being sent out to slaughter?

Which presidents’ daughters are licking ashes from their lips

or dreaming up ropes to wrap around their necks

in case they ever make it home alive?

 

Our eyes are closed, America.

There are souls in the boots of the soldiers, America

Fuck your yellow ribbon.

You wanna support our troops,

bring them home,

and hold them tight when they get here.