The Folly in Standing Up
Few things smell like Sunday
Like a boiling pot of red beans in the kitchen
Reginald knows this
The scent pulls his eyes open from his afternoon slumber
He has left the TV on
And it is buzzing like a sunrise
He is not ready to welcome
A high tide of History Channel
Destabilization for a veteran
At 68 years old
Reginald has forgotten about more things
To apologize for
Then times he deserved an apology himself
But the TV is asking 1967 questions
2K Reginald simply doesn’t have answers for
Like why a North Korean sunset tastes metallic
How he could never wash the jungle
From between his toes
The remote control is buried in a tree stump
Three feet away from his rocking chair
But there is a folly in standing up
Like volunteering
Like letting your head be exposed
To the mercy of thick brush
A non-English speaking nightfall
That hates you
Hates you in Lao
Hates you
For fighting for a country that hates you
Traitor
Mutt
That dog don’t hunt
Unless he buried everyone’s shit first
Boy
Reginald can feel the snakes ascending his chair
The venom is mercy
Don’t wanna bleed out in no rice patch
With some Huntsville peckerwood laughing over me
Best bite me now
Lest my squad call you a nigger lover
Keep your head low Re-Re
There’s less armor on the back
Of this helmet
They’ll make your dome blush
Like an ink blot
Tell command that the darkies
Got no sense of direction
Dead negroes can’t pin no tales
On trigger happy donkeys
Keep your head low Re-Re
The ceiling fan ain’t no rescue chopper
Don’t know what’s waiting for me
Back there anyway
Another dead minister
A Doberman extending from the ethos
Of a blue uniform
At least here I got a M16 chance
An AWOL shot at seeing 70
Ain’t you heard the forest fire screams
The scratches the starving natives leave
On my chest trying to eat the ammunition clips
Across my belt
In the land of the Goukes
The porch monkey is king
Keep your rifle dry
And your eyes open when you sleep
Don’t know when one of these good ol boys
Gonna be too high
To tell I ain’t no 14 year old Vietcong
Too ashamed by the time they come down
They gotta hide me
In a murder hole
No thank you
Re-Re don’t do haiku
Too many hung. Casualties. Looks just like Heaven’s. One hand clapping.
The TV is calling its documentary a special
Like there’s anything special about
The smell of charred meat
Where a village used to be
Re-Re wants to stand up
But he can’t
Still trying to roll over
From that pretty girl before the others
Got their turn
Can’t stand up mid stroke
Lest they believe
You’re a faggot over here
Couldn’t understand her
But tears are easy to translate
The numbness of a woman’s befouled body
Only visits you in foxholes
Or letters to home
You sign as Thomas or Jonathan
In case the mail carrier grew up
With Trent Lott
Didn’t have no Casius Clay celebrity
Couldn’t Louisville loudmouth
My way out of coming here
Re-Re counts his days in racial slurs
And epitaphs
Just 284 Nigger watch my back’s
Till he leaves the jungle
Funny how the concrete
Is softer than American irony
How the clouds will always look
Like a napalm sky
Few things smell like Sunday
Like the handle of a semi automatic
Messenger
But Reginald gets it
Gets his rocking chair
Will never be sacred ground
As long as he keeps a memory
Gets that apologies are lost in the winds
Of lands you never plan on returning to
Which is why
He will never ask for the ones
He actually deserves
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