Unquenchable tears squeezed dry
     unreleasingly flow

No bottom

No relief

No end

Always there
     just behind awareness
     ready to spring forth
     at the drop of a memory
     the turn of a thought
     about war 

W . . . A . . . R

It haunts me

It pursues me

It badgers me
     casting a pallor of gloom
     throughout my being

My dark obsession with war
My love-hate relationship with war
My intrusive preoccupation with war

It seems they have always been with me
 
Christ--I was a war-baby
     conceived at the turning point
     of "The Good War" 

An early memory is listening
     with Mom by the new kitchen sink
     to a radio broadcast of Eisenhower
     consummate Father-General
     explaining Korea
 
So hurtfully shamed I was
     that Dad stayed stateside and didn't fight
     teaching navigation to the poor bustards
     who got shot up over Dresden or Okinawa
     when taunted by snot-nosed playmates in wooded forts
 
No trophies for me to brandish
 
I remember how precious
     was the black plastic machine-gun
     so shiny with the bright blood-red bullets
     a ten-year-old's Christmas present to celebrate 

As a barely aware boy child
     voraciously I read
     every war novel and voluminous war history
     I could clutch my chubby hands on

On Saturday afternoons
     again and again we'd watch the heroic endeavors
     splashed on silvered screen in darkened matinees
     of Wayne McQueen Cooper Murphy & Peck
     or see reruns in flickering tv black and white
     of Combat Flash Gorden Blackhawk
 
Very ironic my disappointment
     and already seething resentment
     fearfully whispering to buddies
     in dimming light of Boy Scout campfire
     that we wouldn't have a war
     to valiantly perform acts of courage in
     when the '56 Suez Canal crises
     sputtered to a truce without hostilities
     just as Vietnam loomed
     minuscule still
     to stain inexorably darker
     blotting itself right in the middle
     of our generation
 
We got our war after all
 
Compelled I was to go
     to volunteer
     to experience that little war
     would-be and dirty
     of my generation
     despite my abhorrence and disgust
     my soul-quaking doubt

Jesus
     I was a Peacenik demonstrator
     and an advanced ROTC student in college
     both horrified and fascinated
     by my role of officer-soldier 

Maniacally I dreamed blood-dark dreams
     of violently gallant glory suicidal
     charging up some thickened jungle slope
     into a hail-fire of slicing AK-47 rounds 

To have Charlie do to me
     what I was too chicken to do to myself
     even when blitzed on shots
     of bar whiskey and San Miguel
 
And it happened
     despite my fervent death-wish to the contrary
     I survived

               * * *

Now almost two decades later
     despite Sara's and my strong prohibition
     against guns or war toys
     son Thomas barely six
     is fixated on
     Rambo Ninja GI Joe
     Transformers Commando Karate Kid 

Through such means
     do we teach our gender
     the race-consiousness of war

Just this Saturday past for example
     in K-Mark he wanted so passionately
     the guerrilla-style M-16
 
"Please, Dad, Please. It's only a toy, Dad. Please"
     his beaming face begged up at me

So much a part of me
     wanted him to have it
     and one for me too
 
Then I could take him to some
     deep dark sun-patched wood
     to charge through some mutually fantasized
     virtual image of heroically routing
     for freedom
     for the redwhite&blue
     for mother and the darlin' little sweetheart
     back in the homeland
     a dreaded dastardly enemy's ambush
     in gallant uphill rush 

To show him the ropes
     the tricks
     the little secrets
     of successfully challenging fate
     again and again by repeated rolls
     of the combat dice
 
To play war games (again) with him

Sometimes I despair
     how I can teach him to abhor
     what so much a part of me still so loves

Star Wars The Road Warrior Enemies
     my precious New York Giants even
     sublimated wish fulfillments to go forth and kill
 
Sara wishes for me not to be a woman
     to suffer through the monthly cycle of hormones

I wish for her not to be a man
     to suffer through this obsession with killing
 
Neat balance

               * * *
 
So . . . what do I conclude
     winging my way skyward toward Buffalo
     through this brilliantly bright New York State early summer morning
     over checkered fields of sundry muted green-browns
     and haphazard windings of rivers and roads
     with the tears just streaming again down
     my sun-tanned-and-glassed countenance
     while my fellow yuppie business-person passengers
     pass the time behind designer attache cases or Wall Street Journals

Maybe . . . just perhaps
     through this process of working through
     once more my meta-grief about war
     I shall somehow become more a peacemaker
     waging peace
 
No war
     is ever worth
     one
     single
     tear

                            In flight between LaGuardia
                                 and Buffalo, New York

                                            Spring, 1985

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