Health
Jason Arment
In country, SOP was ignore everything.
How the radio jammers hundreds of hertz
split the heads of Marines
with a throbbing ache
or the way dust storms
caused sickness so severe
the Corps airlifted patients
to Sweden's neutrality
Now
veterans line the streets
& methadone clinics
seemingly invisible to the public
Back home,
even if we'd
have it otherwise
—ignore everything.
Every Marine a Rifleman
Jason Arment
A well aimed shot
is worth ten
wild ones,
not so with people
Although bullets
& people
are sometimes similar
& made for each other
People can disobey
follow their own way,
a bullet is nothing more
than an empty vessel
Jarhead is a telling euphemism
along with dum-dum round
misfire, hangfire,
& blanks
Jarheads are bullet-catchers
as well as gunslingers,
a moth to flame Mobius strip
that hasn't stopped since 1775
Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, War-guided
Jason Arment
Civilians don't know anything
about missiles, so no surprise
when ISIS started using TOWs
no one cared
An Egyptian destroyer
trolling the Red Sea
broadsided by a
small sun
Made me think of when
I swam in the same waters
with the Israeli Defense Force
where Eilat meets the waves
the memory made remote
by the video of
rocket flare
& blinding impact
When I was in Iraq
the only people with TOWs
were: the U.S. &
allied forces
Now
the situation has changed
from RPGs to TOW missiles,
& ISIS on the rise.
Marine Blues
Jason Arment
The blues
if it were darker
but not bruise black
more like blood on the asphalt
& not the musicians
playing their hearts
out every night
more fevered dream, fetid sweat
The feeling
when all is lost
& not just for a second,
but forever
The crumbling
of rotted wood
underfoot
or callow hearts
Like coming down
off a drug, or
laying out a gun
& writing a note
Mostly the last one
but a little of all of them
because my blues, brother
will drag you from sunlight
The Absence of Dreams
Jason Arment
I miss dreaming
until I skip the meds
& wake up
sweat soaked screaming
In one night-terror
I'll never forget
the squad & I reunited
to patrol stateside streets
We ran into a kid
I used to teach math
at an inner-city
middle school
I maced & beat the 6th grader,
not out of malice, but compulsion.
No idea if
he survived