War
the longer I listenthe less I know.
He sat on the bedside commode, the stench of feces filled the air, the sound of blasting gas resounded in our silence. Diarrhea sucks, thinks I.
Bent over, life inside his aged tent - He is beautiful. Beautiful and broken (like broken window panes are beautiful...)This beautiful, broken, diarrhea stricken man opens his mouth to speak and I listen:
What do i know about war? Real war. He said, "the people that ask if you took pictures were never really there." the bodies, some five minutes old, some black and decayed, five months ripegoing going going ~as far as the eye could see. At twenty what did he know of death? Yethe recalledsitting on the bedside commode the first man he killed."Why didn't he halt when I said to? He spoke English as well as I did." The dead man was shot through the jaw, it swung back and forth in death.The dead German's commanding officer said he would've done the same if he were in Dave's place and Dave were in his. "All's fair in love and war," Dave tells me.
"What does fairness have to do with this?" thinks I.
Just a boy. Do I justify his women - the prostitutes in Paris? the Swiss girls entertaining the first GI's in Switzerland? It's all entangled with pity, really. My heart pities the boy shooting his first live man. The child beating his wife night after night, nightmares that seem so real - the Germans coming after him, closing in...he must fight! But - not her, she didn't do a thing. So he learns to share - all that's hidden; all that's held down, deep down...So he tells me, his nurse. And I listen as he sits on the bedside commode. Sixteen million farm boys were drafted in WWII. Sixteen million. Six Chicago's. Sixteen Auckland's. Two and a half New York City's - gone to war.
We've lived in different worlds, yet I find him in my world, in my hospital.
"Your husband is really lucky, does he know that?"
It's not the words that bless me, it was all of it: the time it took for him to open up to me; which wasn't FOR me, it was for his wounded soul to let out the memories, to make them more real perhaps instead of wretched demons in the solitude of his minds eye. Again: What do I know about war? Anyhow.
Blessed am I. Naive am I. Blessed am I.
He sat on the bedside commode, the stench of feces filled the air, the sound of blasting gas resounded in our silence. Diarrhea sucks, thinks I.
Bent over, life inside his aged tent - He is beautiful. Beautiful and broken (like broken window panes are beautiful...)This beautiful, broken, diarrhea stricken man opens his mouth to speak and I listen:
What do i know about war? Real war. He said, "the people that ask if you took pictures were never really there." the bodies, some five minutes old, some black and decayed, five months ripegoing going going ~as far as the eye could see. At twenty what did he know of death? Yethe recalledsitting on the bedside commode the first man he killed."Why didn't he halt when I said to? He spoke English as well as I did." The dead man was shot through the jaw, it swung back and forth in death.The dead German's commanding officer said he would've done the same if he were in Dave's place and Dave were in his. "All's fair in love and war," Dave tells me.
"What does fairness have to do with this?" thinks I.
Just a boy. Do I justify his women - the prostitutes in Paris? the Swiss girls entertaining the first GI's in Switzerland? It's all entangled with pity, really. My heart pities the boy shooting his first live man. The child beating his wife night after night, nightmares that seem so real - the Germans coming after him, closing in...he must fight! But - not her, she didn't do a thing. So he learns to share - all that's hidden; all that's held down, deep down...So he tells me, his nurse. And I listen as he sits on the bedside commode. Sixteen million farm boys were drafted in WWII. Sixteen million. Six Chicago's. Sixteen Auckland's. Two and a half New York City's - gone to war.
We've lived in different worlds, yet I find him in my world, in my hospital.
"Your husband is really lucky, does he know that?"
It's not the words that bless me, it was all of it: the time it took for him to open up to me; which wasn't FOR me, it was for his wounded soul to let out the memories, to make them more real perhaps instead of wretched demons in the solitude of his minds eye. Again: What do I know about war? Anyhow.
Blessed am I. Naive am I. Blessed am I.
posted by Adelheide at 8:35 PM
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