Posted on

Accuracy and Truth


One can do military math
On a cardboard box
Using slide rules
Whiz wheels and pins
On a plotting board
Solving ballistic geometry
Manually
Safely calculating
All the elements
Of accurate predicted fire

I used to fill out safety tables
In my head and then
On a scrap of green memo paper
That would get passed to the guns
Now computers do the hard work
In zeros and ones

The precision of navigation systems
Blue Force Tracker and
Command Post of the Future
Are supposed to prevent
The errors that used to creep in
To manual gunnery

But
All of my nightmares
From 25 years of service
Have to do with bombs
Artillery rounds and rockets
Falling where they weren’t intended
Miscommunication
Load elevation
Miss-orientation
False identification
Wrong Laser codes
Wrong attack angle
Danger Close
Human error
Gets men and women
Killed

Garbage In
Garbage Out

Flash and Boom
Reverberation
And Then
Radio Silence

Posted on

The Meaning of Words

The SDF who fought ISIL,
Are now called terrorists.
State news said “neutralized”
When 300 Kurds massacred.

A bloody military invasion
Is “establishing a safe zone.”
14 Kurdish cities- “liberated”-
Are now under foreign rule.

Turkey’s nemesis in Pakistan
Offers Erdogan his “full support.”
NATO urges Turkish “restraint”
The Arab League urges the UN.

The EU cries refugee “blackmail,”
But 6B euros to keep them out.
DoS hasn’t seen “significant”
Examples of ethnic cleansing.

Doctors without borders, fled.
100,000 civilians “displaced”
To join the already 700,000
Requiring food aid in N. Syria.

Operation Peace Spring
Is a bottomless well of war.
Because there is no meaning
Left in the words of men.

Posted on

Indefensible

In East Nuristan
The FOB named
For the fallen
Is a bad omen
For the rising.

Men slid down
The mountain.
With the snow,
Beads dripping
Icy blood into
The glacial waters
Of the Bashgal.

The river fed
The valley below.
Men fed bullets
Into magazines,
Into weapons,
Into wounds.

As the dead
Were the fed
Into Apaches.
To Bagram,
To Germany,
To Walter Reed.

No Chinooks;
Only single
Blade space.
No banks,
Only buddy
Transfusions.
Out and In.

Surging trade,
Cash, Blood,
Adrenaline,
Democracy.
Nothing lasts.
Not the funds,
Not the shura,
And not peace.

As they tried
To defend the
Indefensible.
From a fishbowl
Between two
Dying worlds.

Posted on

A Dead Star

Hajis traveling, halted
To whet crows’ feet.
We’d grown too old
Squinting at the sun.

The pilgrimage made
Strangers bedfellows,
And marriages to a cause
If not each other.

But we spoke the same
Inarticulate tongue
That can only be
Transcribed by heartlight,
Illuminated by hands,
Onto the soft vellum,
Leaving indelible ink
On ephemeral skin.

Our love was a dead star,
Over before we knew it.
But it shone through us
Even after. Ever after.