Death of a Humvee Gunner
For Santos, my soldier and my friend

From my quiet life I climbed into the State,
And I sat in its gunner's strap, my dusty face never hotter.
Six-thousand miles from home, loosed from the arms of my wife,
I woke to shrapnel and the suicide bombers.
When I died they washed me out of the truck with bottled water.

Written in the form of "Death of a ball turret gunner" by Randall Jarrell

In honor of Randall Jarrell and all those poets
Who have served our country, begrudgingly or not,
And most of all for Jeremiah Soham Santos.

Death of a ball turret gunner
By Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

There are no Words

There is no might
To show the strength of what I feel
There is no door
To protect what I might steal
There is no force
To capture what flows from my heart
There is no line
To show where I would start

There is no length
To measure how far I could go
There is no mind
To understand what I know
There is no book
To record all the things I'd do
There are no words
To describe my love for you

This Poem

Will not save you
It will not comfort you
Or win the heart
Of a beautiful girl
It won’t fold your clothes
Show you the future
Or change the past
It can’t even see

But if you let it
It will take you
On a journey
To a shady, secluded spot
Beneath some palm trees
Swaying in the breeze
On a faraway beach
Where wave after wave
Crashes against the shore

Passing Death

I passed death the other day
He was out jogging
When I ran down to the store
He waved, as usual

I saw him last week
At the post office on 3rd
But I managed to avoid
Being seen and having to chat

This morning
At the doughnut shop
He made a joke over coffee
It wasn’t that funny
But you know,
I laughed anyway

Inspiration

To the casual observer
I sit here at a metal desk,
Empty paper before me
With a pencil in my hand.
But it’s not a pencil,
It is a giant metal rod
And I’m on a mountain top
Arms outstretched
Waiting for inspiration
To strike like lightening
And come surging though me
With a million volts;
Channeling through my body
Into my pencil and
Pouring out across the page
In words that bring laughter,
Sadness or pain,
Anything.

Audaces Fortuna Iuvat
Fortune favors the bold

If necessity is the mother of invention
Then opportunity is it's father

So I boldly grab the future
And tucking it under my arm
Like a sack of apples
I head toward the horizon

Books

The truth about books is this,
They multiply.
It’s their quiet little secret
And no one talks about it.
But sometimes at night,
If you listen real close,
You can hear Lolita sneak over a shelf
And cuddle up next to
The Biography of Thomas Jefferson.
Or somehow A Tale of Two Cities
Finds its way onto the wrong shelf.
Before you know it
You have two more copies of
An Illustrated Guide to North American Birds,
Maybe even a leather-bound copy
Of Treasure Island or Kidnapped
That you find sitting on the coffee table.
Then one morning
You come into the study
To drink some hot herbal tea,
And there is President Jefferson
Looking back at you
With that wry smile.
That sardonic grin, that gives it all away.

The Mystery of Love

The mystery of true love is this
You fall in love with the one whose
Eyes are the right distance apart
And the one who's figured out
The exact distance to your heart

Waiting for His Letters

I wonder what
She did with his letters
The ones she got
After the news of his death
I wonder if
She read them
And if those words
Brought him back to life
For just a second
I wonder if she smelled
The papers
Hoping for his scent
Or if her tears
Blurred the words
As she buried her face
In the crumpled pages