Dead space - Shakespeare's Monkeys

dead space

(night ambush near the DMZ, monsoon season, 1968)
dead space

on a trail bend
high on a ridge,
we set up the gun.
a thin fire zone
we could fill with the end
of things.

coming or going
they were as good as dead.

we waited all night.

before dawn
there were voices.
we turned them inside out.

everything in the world
happened there in the dark.

when light came
there were bodies
and four blood trails.
somewhere men were dying.

the sun was very hot
when we picked up
everything we had
and moved across the mountains.

Anstey -
Sparse and desolate for sure. I am not sure about the first two lines. I feel that somehow they could be worked together a bit tighter.

Kat -

this is incredibly profound writing......as words about killing and dying should be, but aren't always.....starkly to the point, yet poignant......my only suggestion would be to move the line, "somewhere men are dying" to the very end of the poem.....it's such a great line that it speaks to so much more than your poem......and would shine like a light in the darkness as the ending thought the reader is left with.....to contemplate......Kat

Anstey -
Kat's dead on about that line, however, I do wonder about moving it as it flows so logically from the previous thought. I would actually think first about just cutting the last stanza. It is a VERY powerful piece. (Like you know how to do anything else!

)

Norm -

Your exact concern was in my mind when I wrote this, but I wanted to say that the dead space on that trail was also inside us. One of the worse things that happened there was the indifference we felt about men dying somewhere. Since we didn't sustain casualities in the ambush, the next day was just putting the 100 pounds we carried on our backs again, and moving further into the mountains. So, I ended the poem with the almost prosaic notion of repetetive, tired existence.

Medal of Honor recepient Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska once said, "The worse thing isn't dying for your country, it's killing for it. That's what haunts you all your life." He was right.

Anstey -
I think that your reasoning is perfectly valid. I think the fact you already thought of it tells me you should just leave it as is. It's a very very good piece of writing. I have to tell you, what i find most amazing Norm, isn't that you can write this poem, it's that you can write this poem and the poem about the fox. (which remains my favorite of all your work that i've seen, and possibly one of my favorite poems ever)

Norm -
I am more honored by that than you can imagine. Thank you.