Tell The Men (poem)

This poem was originally a dream/nightmare I had after coming home from a journalism trip to Nicaragua during the 1980s. I’ve worked on it a lot over the years since then. I think I originally titled it “Dream After Coming Home From a Covert Operation”, because I had the dream upon coming home from a journalism trip to northern Nicaragua, to the area where an American mercenary was flying a Hughes 500 (I think) helicopter, and was shot down by Sandinista soldiers. Both the pilot and his passenger were killed. But I like the poem now, as it is today.

Tell the Men

                                                                 

                                                                   ©2012 Dean Metcalf

I.   I am the dream commander.

All around me

along the smoky runway

men fall, strafed

spinning

                bloody

                              down.

I scream, but

they will not believe:

our own

     top‑secret

     quiet‑rotor

     radar‑guided

     night‑vision

     heat‑seeking

dream‑metal dragonflies

have returned

to kill us.

II.  "But they're ours!" men scream

as they stand, are hit, and fall

      spinningbloodydown.

Running, my body floats above the runway

among thumb‑size neon‑red tracers

borne upon their own wind: puffs of it

pass between my ribs.

III. In this dream, only I know:

words

are weapons.

All around me, men see,

trying not to see.

Men fail to aim their words

at the real enemy.

Men drop their books

or read absently

standing in the open

as if life were not dangerous.

IV.  Sergeant!

Work your way along the line.

Tell the men:

      Fill sandbags with words.

      Build a parapet to fight behind.

      If they are the right words

      you live.

Tell every man:

      Dip each fifth word

      in your own blood,

      so your shots will glow red:

      tracers to find your targets

           in the dark.

Tell every man to sharpen one word.

      Say, You must choose:

      "yes"

          

      or

      "no."

      Snap it onto your rifle,

      for when this gets down to bayonets.

Tell all the men:

      It's not the men of darker skin

      who broadcast our blood upon the land

      as a poor shopkeeper tosses water

      from a red plastic pail

      to settle dust on an unpaved street.

Tell the men:

      We toss our own blood in the dust

      where crimson arterial spurts of it

      roll into powdery skins

      like water in flour

      no longer recognizable as blood

      it could be any dark liquid:

      it could be used

      crankcase oil.

Tell them:

      We live and die

            by what we think

            by what we write

            by what we say

            by what we do.

Tell the men:

      Get your words.

      Get in the trench.

      Here they come.

                                                               Dean Metcalf

                                                               P.O. Box 548

                                                               Joseph OR 97846

                                                             3dmetcalf@gmail.com

This poem was first published several years ago in the online journal RIVEN, edited by Michael Spring. Tell the Men© 2012 Dean Metcalf