A Mamas And Papas CD In The War Zone

All soldiers have
this in common,
if they’re at war,

they want to go home alive.
Their mouths tell you
one thing

but their eyes
can only tell the truth.
There is no mission

except the mission
to haul ass back home.
Suddenly, the concussion

of a bomb stuns us,
all eyes look everywhere---
there’s the smoke.

When we get there
the carcass of a car
has been raped,

a lone tire
stands idiotically
by itself

waiting for the damn car.
There’s an Iraqi lying nearby,
one of his legs

looks like hamburger meat
on Hamburger Hill.
The dead

are always innocent-looking.
A Marine smokes a cigarette
and says to us,

"You from Texas?"
"Yeah, you?"
"California dreaming."

And
every war is like a
Monday.

Back at the hotel
we got the smell
out of our nostrils

but never
out of our
minds.

The dead lie down
on the insides
of our eyelids.