Return

Up here,

the boredom leaks through his gear

and the dust stops

its constant evolutionary battle

against his skin.

The cooler air

pushes web and pouch and pack

aside

and the turbines

drum the magic of flight

in subliminal statements

of mechanical fact

into his listening bones.

Banking over the drab squares

of desperate lives

divided by the stale and crumbling

grid of a worthless town

the sweat dries in the slipstream

and if he reaches out

he can feel the air gather itself

against his glove.

The innocence of a sandcastle

from here, but below,

the walls are cover and question.

The sweat and breath

of dashes to jam

a shoulder against the bricks

that separate life from life.

To sight along lines of fire

with weapons solid

and eyes aged

in concentration.

Waiting for the elongated second

when it all breaks away

and the boredom compresses

like a spring and leaps toward

the flat cracking noise

that draws the shoulder blades together

and ducks heads,

too late to change its destination.

War baby

A war baby by choice,
but not your ragged terrified
road hugging, bombed, dirt faced
newsreel staggering refugee.
Not a many homed army brat,
with multiple schools of almost friends
and inconstant bedrooms
and fated participation.
I wanted war, technical seduction,
cheered black and white tanks
dust plumed and deadly
rolling across the fields of nineteen forty
long dead death dealers sitting straight,
propaganda valentines.
Watched parades and charges,
knew the enemy in his uniformed strength
and focussed fear and knew the attraction.
Played it too,
always the winner against
the younger brother nations
because history had left us clear on the score at least.
Behind our house the Golan Heights
were a meter high, grassy
and we rolled and shot and hit and lived to
fight other endless summer days.
In the ritually silenced news time living room
drab green machines quieted by voiceovers
jumped back from punched messages
that flew over desert and hill and
wrote history in flying stone and flame.
Or jungle expanded,
the slashing sleight of handfrom a deadly magician’s sleeve,
an earthward fleeing comma
punctuating with an instant ink blot
of obliteration.
I was a war child, and needed it,
until age sensitised
tough thoughts
and imagined hardness
and I felt the fleeing footsteps of fear
the unravelling edge of terror.
Now I watch, eyes trained and uncertain.