My ears fill up with
oceans, potholes, marijuana
Empty things
Sticky things
And what’s left of me in the morning
hums the songs that soldiers sing
remembers you in little photographs
Has dreams of enlisting
And my heart swells up
With the August fruit flies
And the spots in my eyes.
I looked up out of the hollow
and I thought of that dying cockroach
On my well-ran road
And the wound that festers in my glove
That yawning knuckle
And the cockroach didn’t think of me
Couldn’t hear the music
His is a fight all consuming
As is mine.

There was good fighting and bad fighting
There was good *** and not bad ***
There was drinking and smoking
There was sparring and smokers
Changing levels, slips and counters
Brawlers, meatheads, tanks, and technicians
Water, sweat, Thai oil, Sunday morning coffee
And sometimes
so much blood.
There was beer on Fridays and sometimes Saturdays
There was always, always ****.
There were soldiers and children like shins and calves
There was losing
And there was winning
And there was all of us
And when there was just me,
by God there was fighting.