My Parade

                             

The window sign, “Last Wash, 9 p.m.,” is one command too many

In the days I searched for sanity after two years of putting on uniforms,

Following orders, saluting, getting promoted, and not getting killed

While losing touch with people I thought I knew.

A guy half-my-size, reeking of tobacco,

Gives me the company line:

“Power shuts off at 9:45 p.m., done or not.”

With my eyes on him, I slowly insert a handful of coins,

Each a burst from my M-16 in this God forsaken laundromat.

I push the button hard,

Water gushes below.

Want to break something,

Gunfire wasn’t enough.

A wall clock says I have 28 minutes

To halt the anger

That never lets me rest.

I won’t always be like this

But the memory will, ticking painfully

As I wander into the night,

A wobbly Santa Claus

With a duffle bag of damp clothes,

In search of a beautiful woman

At some misty street corner,

Whispering, “This way.”

I’ll follow her up creaking wood stairs

To an opened door and a large dryer

By a small table with two glasses of red wine,

But I’m back at the car before

She says my travels are over for the night.

I shiver in the first light pouring through the windshield

And a tapping on the window–fingers tighten with nothing to grip.

The engine turns over quietly

And I leave the enemy, momentarily.

A mile or so later I park in an abandoned strip mall

Where I carefully place

Red underwear, a white t-shirt and blue pants

On the car roof—

The rest of my clothes go on the hood.

The drying process is my parade in a parking lot

Somewhere in America.

—

(I started writing this “poem” after I was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1971. I had a lot of anger back then over the foolishness of the Vietnam “Conflict” and the general attitude of people who distanced themselves from those who served. I witnessed a lot of broken lives, some during the war, but most decades later. I pray for peace in the Ukraine.)