the same, again, again

I am in the bunker
the wire is crawling with them
like so many black clad snakes
spewing venom at my brothers and at me
and I am out of ammo, my M16 magazines
empty, caked with mud

everyone is looking to me
for salvation, for a salvo of rounds
at the VC, and I find a twenty two
Ruger pistol, the same one I used
to **** a buzzard for sport, one
sinful desert day; and now I aim
at the enemy, firing over
and over, hitting them
dead center, but they
keep coming

I never run out of rounds
but the impotence of my fire
burns inside me--I reach for my empty M16,
but it's still empty--they keep coming

even when I wake, even when
the morning sun has blotted out
the black dream

they keep coming
I keep reaching, reaching
for the empty gun

I feel like a folded symbol,
inside the chipped-cherry boxcar
that is my damp, June mind.

A fetus seizing in the womb,
hooked up like a cheap monitor.
A foreign strandedness, wrapped
by a boa of dark country back roads
and sterile air skipping across grass.

If I stop, If I sleep
the sweat seeps from my pores
like a sterling grey squad,
oxidizing in the fog,
swimming around headspace,
guns melting with claymation cheeks,
howls into the night, darling deadbirds.

I am now happy and remember
only other happy memories.
Over a decade of depression
and now this.

I feel unfinished, unwanted
by the quickness of life.
I feel like a grain
caught in a gust so swift,
I may never adjust.

I, the empty-headed boy,
causing jet-black glass
to appear on sand,
to remove my footprints,
and incase them, phantoms.

i.
i spent my nights writing wishes into
paper cranes after we broke down, a repetition
of ink to paper - fold, press, release -

your name, your name, your name,
became habit every time i picked up the pen

ii.
when i dream of walking through
haunted houses, i hear voices through the
open windows, i swear it is you saying
come home, baby, come home. 

a draft cuts through each whisper and i pretend
it is your breath on my neck,
that your hands will follow, but when i turn
it is only the breeze from a crane beating its wings.

iii.
when it storms, the dock we used to
share secrets on floods - my fingers scratch
at my thighs like i am picking apart the wooden planks,
my skin splinters in all the places i have ever
been touched by you.  

i fold myself into a ship and sail where you can't
follow