Tell the Men
©2012 Dean Metcalf
I. I am the dream commander.
All around me
along the smoky runway
men fall, strafed
spinning
bloody
down.
I scream, but
they will not believe:
our own
top‑secret
quiet‑rotor
radar‑guided
night‑vision
heat‑seeking
dream‑metal dragonflies
have returned
to kill us.
II. "But
they're ours!" men scream
as they stand, are hit, and fall
spinningbloodydown.
Running, my body floats above the runway
among thumb‑size neon‑red tracers
borne upon their own wind: puffs of it
pass between my ribs.
III.
In this dream, only I know:
words
are weapons.
All around me, men see,
trying not to see.
Men fail to aim their words
at the real enemy.
Men drop their books
or read absently
standing in the open
as if life were not dangerous.
IV. Sergeant!
Work your way along the line.
Tell the men:
Fill
sandbags with words.
Build a
parapet to fight behind.
If they
are the right words
you live.
Tell every man:
Dip each
fifth word
in your
own blood,
so your
shots will glow red:
tracers
to find your targets
in the dark.
Tell every man to sharpen one word.
Say, You
must choose:
"yes"
or
"no."
Snap it
onto your rifle,
for when
this gets down to bayonets.
Tell all the men:
It's not
the men of darker skin
who
broadcast our blood upon the land
as a poor
shopkeeper tosses water
from a
red plastic pail
to settle
dust on an unpaved street.
Tell the men:
We toss
our own blood in the dust
where
crimson arterial spurts of it
roll into
powdery skins
like
water in flour
no longer
recognizable as blood
it could
be any dark liquid:
it could
be used
crankcase
oil.
Tell them:
We live
and die
by what we think
by what we write
by what we say
by what we do.
Tell the men:
Get your
words.
Get
in the trenches.
Here they
come.
Dean
Metcalf
P.O.
Box 548
Joseph
OR 97846
3dmetcalf@gmail.com
This poem was first published several years ago in the
online journal RIVEN, edited by Michael Spring. Tell the Men© 2012 Dean Metcalf
"...if they are the right words
ReplyDelete-you live.