the quiet men

peace;
they've all come home now,
so it must be.

most of the heroes are dead,
most of the casualties still live.

some have left their limbs
over there.
all have left their innocence
over there.

peace;
it's a lie, because once enjoined,
the war never ends.

the quiet on the western front
doesn't mean the killing's stopped.

coming home alive
doesn't mean that life goes on.

decades pass,
the tattoos and scars fade,
but not the remembrance
of the foreign metal's visitations.

may 27th at 'the heart and hand'
nottingham, 1944
that generation of quiet men
had not yet lost their voices
aspirations and apprehensions
mingled with cold beer
in ten days their world would change
but they didn't know it yet

june 5th, and nottingham fitfully slept
as out on folkingham field
the drone of hundreds of motors began

0210 on june 6th
boys have clipped to static lines
and on the green light
will jump into the uncertain night
just as they've been trained

0215, and men land
as their boyhood deflates in silken billows
there is no turning back

this crystalline moment will be lost
in the blur of what will follow

close friends bleeding out their last
and crying for their mothers
crying for their loss

boots in bomb-wrecked tree limbs

a thousand living skeletons
shuffling behind barbed wire

memories which will haunt dreams
will fail to affect reality
because they must be sacrificed
to the illusion of life going on.

Reviews

[Toni Prehoda Kahler]

This is incredible! I love that you've taken all the cliche ideas and phrases we use when we speak of war and turned them around to reality. The repetition of "Peace" and then your images of why it's not are emotional, jarring, bringing me to sadness.
The way you build up the specific event with dates and then narrow it to military minutes makes this read like a movie, but more important to me is the content: at 0210 "boys...will jump into the uncertain night" and at 0215 "..men land.." "Close friends..crying...crying..." and "boots in bomb-wrecked tree limbs" --- Every image your words evoke makes me understand deeply what war has done, is doing, will do. Powerful, thank you.