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craigverlinPoems
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
0
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 12:17 PM UTC
Battlefields
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
Written by
craigverlin
American
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 12:17 PM UTC
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