immolation
al rogovin
I saw burning tanks and personnel carriers
while I did my time.
At noght, through the thermal sight,
they looked kind of funny,
Like bad video game graphics through drunk eyes.
In the day, they didn’t look so funny anymore.
I used to keep my wife’s latest letter
in my cargo pocket as a good luck charm,
but it kept reminding me that there were people
inside those burning vehicles
and they might have had wives too.
More than anything, I didn’t want to go like that.
Burning alive means no remains for mommy and wife.
Now at night, when the orange streetlights
outside my apartment whisper:
“Fuck you” in my ear
and keep me up after Letterman
I tell them it wasn’t me.
“I didn’t pull no god-damn trigger. I was just the driver.
You’re looking for Sgt. Chios.” I say.
When I finally get to sleep,
I dream that I am looking through,
a brand now pack of baseball cards
with the pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers on the front
with their complete major and minor league stats on the back.
I wake up in the bloodbox apartment
on warm April mornings
late for work again,
bitch slapped
with war fever and tears burning behind my eyes.