Lucie Brock-Broido Inspired Poetry

Disease

What is this? An alternative?
A sudden transition compelling me to stop.
I am not responsible.
There are those whom will be upset,
angry even.
They don’t feel as I do.
They got out of bed this morning, started their day as usual.
Let them have it out with disease itself.
Please leave me out of it.

Before I fell down I fed my dogs.
My wife suspects bacteria,
an unclean blender,
blames herself.

She looks so sexy emerging from the covers
and I tell her so,
then that’s it until 4 o’clock when, feeling better,
I can eat, drink, think, and fuck again.



Baghdad

“Democrats seized on the anniversary of President Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech to formally send the bill.”–NYT Headlines, May 1, 2007

And what of “going home?” Just where is that, exactly?
Why now? What about the Iraqi family on 34th and 11th? They told Jerome just before the car bomb went off to “please stay.”
What are we supposed to do, anyway? At home that is?
Four fucking years of Baghdad just so some bastard can make Baghdad out to beVietnam.

So why don’t we just leave now? What have we done here?
Lot’s of killing going on. That’s for sure.
How the hell do I make sense out of Baghdad?
What do I tell people in Nebraska?
What if Bush doesn’t pull out?
It scares me what the world might do.

Man, I’m just getting the hang of it.
Just dialing in who’s who.
It takes time ya’ know? Got to kill a while to figure it out.
If they do pull us out of here, how about a lifetime supply of free gas for our ATVs?

The veteran sits in my class learning “critical thinking skills.”
Sitting next to the biology major bound for graduate school.
It’s banal and cliche, but no less painlful for being so.
Why this difficulty in returning home? Do we really feel differently about men in uniform since WW II? I am aware of the gender distinction here.

Flying over Baghdad, not in an F-16 Tomcat, but in my imagination,
I see the 18-year-old American soldier shrouded in technology and weaponry,
seemingly invincible until a singular piece of shrapnel penetrates his skin,
above his flak-jacket and just below his adam’s apple.

He’s dead on the street,
somebody’s boy back in Pennsylvania, I think,
and I see the 6-year-old Iraqi child watching the G.I.’s death in disbelief .
A moment ago, he thought the G.I. was a spaceman.

No one sees me while I sit in my diaphonuous lace atop a pylon,
a nymph on the streets of Baghdad.
This is all very poetic in the twenty-first century.
What would Keats think?