there's always war -- somewhere

according to eric sevareid, CBS radio correspondent in the final days of WW2: "only the soldier really lives the war" and "war happens inside...." the clipped title of the 1 Oct. 2007 New York Times article that contained these two quotes, "...War...Story...from the Heart, Not the Maps," headed a review of Ken Burns' documentary The War.

real war in the 70's, too.

although that one has since been referred to as a "conflict," but torture's torture even if it's called enhanced interrogation. up the escalator and then down; after Kent State and Watergate, US pulled out, leaving chaos in SE Asia, rice fields contaminated with Agent Orange, survivors of exploded temples floating on rickety barges, landing in New Orleans, and that one's not over, not for them, not for us.

the other one, unsuspected for 30 years, seething in the desert where abraham, jesus, and muhammad shut their doors. i waited it out; Leila Khalid got married, had kids, did the wife-thing, twice.

nam in the jungle rot terrain of my first cello teacher's face;
palestine in place of the entryway mirror after Black September.

victual struggle: blast wars, twisting tales in my dna, to uncoded rubble. thirty more years, maybe, for that, if only i can prevent passing them on, or mutating back to farm country arkansas, the IP paper mill in Camden, now in ruin as if it never was, after the end of my Dad's memoirs.

we war from where we are.