Korean Echoes

My turn had come;
Billy Pigg, helmet flown
lost, shrapnel more alive in him
than blood free as air,
dying in my arms.

Billy asked a blessing, none come
his way since birth. My canteen
came his font. Then he said,
“I never loved anybody.
Can I love you?”

My father told me,
his turn long gone downhill;
“Keep water near you, always.”
He thought I’d be a priest before
all this was over, not a lover.

Once Screamed to the Flag-waving Drunks at the Vets Bar, Late, Memorial Day Evening

Tom Sheehan

Fifty years now and they come at me, in Chicago, Crown Point, Indiana, by phone

from Las Vegas. I tell them how it happened, long after parting, one night when I

was in a bar, thinking of them all.

**

Listen, gunmen, all I can smell is the gunpowder on you sharper than booze.

You wear your clothes with a touch of muzzle flash. Is it a story you want…?

Listen to the years ago, to the no shooting, to the no rout, to the just dying.

The day stank, it wore scabs, had odors to choke tissues and burn secret laminations

of the lungs. Rain festered in soot clouds, rose in the Pacific or the Sea of Japan,

dumped down on us, came up out of yellow clay like a sore letting out.

The air must have been full of bats, of spider weavings; it was lonely as the lobo,

yet a jungle of minds filled it with thought leaves shining with black onyx.

Who needs doctors at dying…? Prayers sew wounds, piece heads, hearts,

hands together, when blood and clay strike the same irrevocable vein, arterial

mush; when God is the earth and clay, silence, the animal taker leaning to grasp.

Listen, gunmen, listen you heroes in mirrors only you see into, we through,

it isn’t the killing, it’s the dying must be felt, associated, even if it stinks.

Blood freezes in hot days of dying, is icicle inside movement of trickery

less than glacier’s, where a man crawls to his maker up his own veins,

is touched, feels the firebrand burn in the cold.

Where are the shade trees, cool drinks…? Once I froze in the confessional

against the fire. He was a Spick, they said, washed his skin too much, wanted

to sandpaper it white, be us, be another man But we wagered ourselves to get him

out of a minefield live as breathing, comrade shot down in the clay in the rain

in the time of bright eyes rolling with thunder’s fear. Was it him we carried,

or the stone of his monument? Tons he was of responsibility, one of us

despite the Spick name, man being borne to die.

God is everywhere, the catechism says, my son says, now, years later. It was once

a divinity we carried on the poles, with his balls gone pistonless, no more a god

to his woman. His image rolled red on the canvas, burned through the handles

of the litter as secret as electricity; Spick shooting himself into us, Godhead

shooting signs up shafts of wood.

Lugging God on sticks and canvas is frightening. We felt this. Jesus! We screamed,

have You let go of this god…? Do You fill him up making him burn our hands?

He wanders now for times, rolling himself together, womanless, childless, a journey

in dark trees, among leaves, in jungles, to get near You. God seeking God at the intercept

of shrapnel, the tearing down and lifting up by our hands, God in the cement of death.

Oh, gunmen, it’s the dying not the killing you must speak of. This day is theirs, not ours,

belongs to the gods of the dead, of the Spick we carried to his dying and all his brothers,

none of them here among us.

Drink, gunmen, one to the Spick and grave’s companions, jungle flights they are in

to match their god with God. And think, gunmen, who among us have the longest

journey among leaves, in darkness, through the spiders of trees, now?

Born to Wear the Rags of War

Tom Sheehan

The day had gone over hill, but that still, blue light remained,

cut with a gray edge, catching corners rice paddies lean out of.

In the serious blue brilliance of battle they’d become comrades

becoming friends, just Walko and Williamson and Sheehan

sitting in the night drinking beer cooled by Imjin River waters

in August of ‘51 in Korea.

Three men drably clad,

but clad in the rags of war.

Stars hung pensive neon. Mountain-cool silences were being earned,

hungers absolved, a ponderous god talked to. Above silences,

the ponderous god’s weighty as clouds, elusive as soot on wind,

yields promises. They used church keys to tap cans, lapped up

silence rich as missing salt, fused their backbones to good earth

in a ritual old as labor itself,

these men clad in the rags of war.

Such an August night gives itself away, tells tales, slays the rose

in reeling carnage, murders sleep, sucks moisture out of Mother Earth,

fires hardpan, sometimes does not die itself just before dawn,

makes strangers in one’s selves,

those who wear the rags of war.

They had been strangers beside each other, caught in the crush

of tracered night and starred flanks, accidents of men drinking beer

cooled in the bloody waters where brothers roam forever, warriors come

to that place by fantastic voyages, carried by generations

of the persecuted or the adventurous, carried in sperm body, dropped

in the spawning, fruiting womb of America,

and born to wear the rags of war.

Walko, reincarnate of the Central European, come of land lovers

and those who scatter grain seed, bones like logs, wrists strong

as axle trees, fair and blue-eyed, prankster, ventriloquist who talked

off mountainside, rumormonger for fun, heart of the hunter,

hide of the herd, apt killer,

born to wear the rags of war.

Williamson, faceless in the night, black set on black,

only teeth like high piano keys, eyes that captured stars,

fine nose got from Rome through rape or slave bed unknown

generations back, was cornerback tough, graceful as ballet dancer

(Walko’s opposite), hands that touched his rifle the way a woman’s

touched, or a doll, or one’s fitful child caught in fever clutch,

came sperm-tossed across the cold Atlantic, some elder Virginia-

bound bound in chains, the Congo Kid come home,

the Congo Kid, alas, alas,

born to wear the rags of war.

Sheehan, reluctant at trigger-pull, dreamer, told deep lies

with dramatic ease, entertainer who wore shining inward a sum

of ghosts forever from the cairns had fled; heard myths

and the promises in earth and words of songs he knew he never knew,

carried scars vaguely known as his own, shared his self with saint

and sinner, proved pregnable to body force,

but born to wear the rags of war

------Walko: We lost the farm. Someone stole it. My father

loved the fields, sweating. He watched grass grow by starlight,

the moon slice at new leaves. The mill’s where he went for work,

in the crucible, drawing on the green vapor, right in the heat of it,

the miserable heat. My mother said he started dying the first day.

It wasn’t the heat or green vapor did it, just going off to the mill,

grassless, tight in. The system took him. He wanted to help.

It took him, killed him a little each day, just smothered him.

I kill easy. Memory does it. I was born for this, to wear

these rags. The system gives, then takes away. I’ll never

go piecemeal like my father.

These rags are my last home.

------Williamson: Know why I’m here? I’m from North Ca’lina,

sixteen and big and wear size fifteen shoes and my town

drafted me ‘stead of a white boy. Chaplain says he git me home.

Shit! Be dead before then. Used to hunt home, had to eat

what was fun runnin’ down. Brother shot my sister

and a white boy in the woods. Caught them skinnin’ it up

against a tree, run home and kissed Momma goodbye,

give me his gun. Ten years, no word. Momma cries about

both them all night. Can’t remember my brother’s face.

Even my sister’s. Can feel his gun, though, right here

in my hands, long and smooth and all honey touch. Squirrel’s

left eye never too far away for that good old gun.

Them white men back home know how good I am, and send me here,

put these rags on me. Two wrongs! Send me too young

and don’t send my gun with me. I’m goin’ to fix it all up,

gettin’ home too. They don’t think I’m coming back,

them white men. They be nervous when I get back, me and that

good old gun my brother give me,

and my rags of war.

------Sheehan: Stories are my food. I live and lust on them.

Spirits abound in the family, indelible eidolons; the O’Siodhachain

and the O’Sheehaughn carved a myth. I wear their scars in my soul,

know the music that ran over them in lifetimes, songs’ words,

and strangers that are not strangers: Muse Devon abides with me,

moves in the blood and bag of my heart, whispers tonight:

Corimin is in my root cell, oh bright beauty of all

that has come upon me, chariot of cheer, carriage of Cork

where the graves are, where my visit found the root

of the root cell---Johnny Igoe at ten running ahead

of the famine that took brothers and sisters, lay father down;

sick in the hold of ghostly ship I have seen from high rock

on Cork’s coast, in the hold heard the myths and musics

he would spell all his life, remembering hunger and being alone

and brothers and sisters and father gone and mother

praying for him as he knelt beside her bed that hard morning

when Ireland went away to the stern. I know that terror

of hers last touching his face. Pendalcon’s grace

comes on us all at the end. Johnny Igoe came alone at ten

and made his way across Columbia, got my mother who got me

and told me when I was twelve that one day Columbia

would need my hand and I must give. And tonight I say,

“Columbia, I am here with my hands

and with my rags of war.”

I came home alone. And they are my brothers.

Walko is my brother. Williamson is my brother.

Muse Devon is my brother. Corimin is my brother.

Pendalcon is my brother.

God is my brother.

I am a brother to all who are dead,

we all wear the rags of war.

© Tom Sheehan

Web site address: http://www.milspeak.org/TomHome2.htm

Update bio: Tom Sheehan’s books are Epic Cures (IPPY Award winner) and Brief Cases, Short Spans, 2008 from Press 53; A Collection of Friends (Aldren nomination) and From the Quickening, 2009, from Pocol Press. His work is in new anthologies from Press 53, Home of the Brave, Stories in Uniform and Milspeak: Warriors, Veterans, Family and Friends Writing the Military Experience.. He has 14 Pushcart nominations, three Million Writers nominations, Noted Stories for 2007 and 2008, the Georges Simenon Award for fiction, a story in the Dzanc Best of the Web Anthology for 2009 and a nomination for Best of the Web 2010. He served in Korea, 1951-52, with the 31^st Infantry Regiment, and has published 13 books. He has appeared in 10 print issues of Ocean Magazine, has 126 cowboy stories on Rope and Wire Magazine, and  many pieces on Troubadour 21 and recorded works on Qarrtsiluni.  He and a committee of friends have co-edited and issued two books on their hometown of Saugus, MA, sold 3600 to date of 4500 printed (842 total pages in the two books) with color sections, text, timelines, nostalgia and history, all proceeds for Saugus High School graduates. He has signed a recent contract for The Collected Works of Tom Sheehan with Milspeak Publishers.