there were old men
laying around the
pool
like cigarette butts
in an ashtray
burnt out and
diminishing as
their feet
dangle in the water
lapping up against
their knees
they talked about
the old war
the good war
back in a time when
there was war to
believe in
now what?

now they have their
feet in a pool
fat white skin
burning in the moonlight
while knobby knees
are canvas to varicose
veins and the occasional
scar

--oh this one from
surgery, this one
from a foxhole
dug out some
hillside near Salerno
sliced up the
side of my leg
nice and good, yessir,
killed the
**** guinea
though don't worry--

and they would hold
out their arms
to explain how
they held those old
standard issue springfield's
while arthritis shook
that imaginary
rifle to the point
of danger but
they never noticed
leaning in to stare down
the sights
aiming carefully at
some elusive
foe across the pool

they would laugh at
how much they hated those
guns
they would laugh at
the insanity of it all
how young they had been
how old they were now
how much had changed
and how much hadn't
their wives were all gone
left widowed or divorced
all it seemed they had
was Tunisia or
Italy or that French
beach early morning in
1944

the world is a battlefield
for old men
with no
weaponry but old
stories caked in dust