vets

frank was a platoon leader in the 82nd airborne,
the "all americans" that jumped into sicily and normandy.
now he's a military police captain in the reserves.
he used to work door at the aardvark
and i usedta play with him
in a band that would play once a week for four hours
in this piece of shit studio over on craig street:
us and four metal bands and the guy who ran it
who looked like geddy lee.
he sounded like the kind of officer
that enlisted swine love to work for,
and other officers mistrust:
the kind that wouldn't have his people do anything
that he wouldn't do himself.

the patio king was a senior airman in the air force,
a mechanic who worked in logistics.
before that he was a punk-rock kid from the fort.
now he tends bar at a couple of clubs
and writes poems and stories
that are as good as charles bukowski
when he fucking feels like it
which lately ain't that often.
he's spending a lot of time with his girlfriend's dtr
which is a fine and honorable thing,
something i can respect.
he was the kind of troop that would always
get the job done, then afterward come and ask,
"hey sarge, _why_ did we have to do that?"

when he was stationed in germany,
he ran into blackwell, who was (i swear to gawd)
an air force cop.
the patio king said that he always used to sweat
driving back on the yard shithammered
until he saw his homeboy working the gate
'cos he knew he'd wave him through.

myself, i was in the air force too
10 years, seven months and 13 days
and then eight yrs in the reserves
until i decided that screw it,
reserve retirement is half of your drill pay
at the time you retire
and you can't draw it until you're 60
(if you live that long) --
i'd rather sleep in late that one weekend a month.

i stopped participating in december y2k
but i got stop-lossed after 9/11
so i didn't get my final separation document
until june 2002, just nine months
before we invaded iraq.
i guess by then they'd figured out
that after two years of inventorying computer equipment
as a master sergeant, they were never
going to have to scrape the barrel
as far down as they'd have had to
to get to where i was.
it took me another coupla yrs
before i threw all my uniforms away.

hell, when i got off active duty,
it took me four years to get over
being on active duty.
i thought i was gonna be a lifer,
one of those guys that does 30 yrs
and has to be dragged out the door
kicking and screaming
then has a heart attack
because he can't handle
being _at ease_.
but things change.

we won the cold war, then like any
other large corporation, we were
_downsized_.
in such an environment,
ppl get scared
and scared ppl feel more entitled
to treat each other like shit.
so when they started offering severance pay
to guys in my rank and year group,
i was a gone motherfucker.
better this year on my own steam, i thought,
with money in pocket
than next year on the end
of somebody's boot.

the major lesson i learned
upon my return to the civilian world
was simply this:
out here, there's no loyalty in any direction.
maybe that was true back there, too,
but they did a better job of concealing it.
or something.

but i digress.

we sat in the bar after it was closed
the three of us telling lies
and her listening.

after we shut it down
(as the first rays of sunrise
were starting to poke over he horizon),
i told her,
"thanks for hanging out
and listening to our bullshit-ass warstories."

she said, "no, i like listening
to the way you guys communicate.
it was interesting.
one of you would say something
then the other ones would affirm it
and that'd open the door
to some new level of disclosure."

(the patio king and i, f'rinstance,
both admitted that we'd ruined our marriages
through our dedication to "the mission."
when i got out, part of the crisis i went through
was finding another "mission."
i finally did: it was being there for my kids.
i haven't landed the jet
on that fucking aircraft carrier yet.)

and that, i suppose, is when i decided to marry her.

we had it easy, the three of us.
we won the cold war
(the other motherfucker blinked)
but we never saw combat.
i know one guy from our set who has:
75th rangers, panama, desert storm.
now he's a samurai: a warrior for hire.
what else do you do on the outside
with what they teach you in the infantry?

you see us all over:
not just the old andy gump guys
in the overseas caps on veterans' day
but guys our age and younger
with multiple body piercings and tattoos
pouring drinks
working in law enforcement
playing in bands
writing
whatevah.

i was listening the other day
to that funkadelic song
"march to the witch's castle"
a song of compassion for the 'nam vets.
(i knew guys who were 16 when their parents
signed the papers for them to go there)
thinking about the ones that are there now
in iraq
and afghanistan
and who knows where next
hoping they make it home safe
and that we embrace them when they do
and honor the memory of those who didn't.