Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Cole Eubanks
57 years old
Cole Eubanks is a retired teacher who spends his summers selling ice cream on the beaches of Atlantic City and the rest of the year reading and writing.
dresser drawer
i did not want to return from vietnam because i was so unclean everyone said i was a hero but they don't know what i've seen they don't know who i shot in the face in the back in the heart all of them were not shooting at me that is the saddest part they do not know some of them were not soldiers some were mothers some were children at least one was a baby they cannot tell me right now to my face why i deserve to have my worthless life
before vietnam i had religion but God never got off the plane if He had He never would have let me do what i did and i would not be going insane
now i keep my god in the dresser drawer he is cold and heavy and grey every night i put him in my mouth and every night i put him away one day soon i will take him out all cold and heavy and full but i will not put him back i'll just take my finger and pull
They Do Not Listen
Most people don't really think about Martin Luther King on his birthday, they're just happy to have the day off. Me, I was just doing my job...killing people.
It's an eye-blink of time between looking down the barrel of a weapon at a human being...and watching his head explode. In the space of seconds some mother's child is gone, and I was not qualified to make that God-like decision. After the Plains Indians hunted buffalo, they offered up prayers of gratitude and sorrow. Then, out of respect for their great sacrifice, consuned every part from tongue to tendons. I wish I had that kind of reconcilliation.
When I got home, the town paraded me on a fire engine with an obese mayor, marching me right up to the front door of my suicide-watch reality... where I now reside.
I married everyone who I killed with a bond greater than what I share with my parents, siblings, wife, or Lord and Savior because I do not think of them all the time.
I feel best when I am drinking because I cannot feel.
The worst part is in the still of the night when I'm looking down that barrel again. In my dreams, the bullets float so slowly that I talk to them... begging them to miss, but they never listen.
Puppies
My plane is ascending, lifting me over this hell of a country and delivering me to the heaven of my home. Although everything is only relief-map size now, I am peering through the thickness of the window...down through wispy clouds. Preternaturally, I view a form. It is a crying and waving man. No! it is the opposite of a wave... He is beckoning and telling me to come back. This broken man is telling me I can never leave... by air... or land... or sea.... There are roots where his feet should be. The land has siezed him. His face is mine!
Flight 211 continues to rise. Somewhere down there are neighborhoods shot full of holes... holes in my friends and fellow soldiers... holes in the Iraqis we fought beside... holes in the insurgents. We were all professionals, like firemen in a blaze. They do not want tears spilled for them, but I do...even the enemy. What hurts worse are the holes made in the old men...women...and the children. They were the amateurs in this insanity. Some of those holes were made by me.
I once held a baby containing holes...leaking blood. She was too young to speak...about my daughter's age, and if she could...I could not understand her language. But she communicated something with her eyes. She told me all the holes in Iraq were now inside my heart... and they could not be repaired by surgery, and they would not be filled in by time.
Shaken, I went for counseling and received only Prozac. And, when I kneeled down to pray...God provided no remedy. My soul has been taken as a permanent hostage.... Is anyone going to pay?
Those women and children are like puppies dodging cars on a five-lane highway. I see this image in my nightly dreams... and I am running with them.
My Prisoner
Motioning with my rifle for him to sit, I enjoy the fear of his sweat. Why don't they just speak English? Oh well, I guess there are no English words for the games his children play when the bullets stop...if the bullets stop...if there are any children left when they do.
He is my prisoner, but I have been captured by Vietnam. I want to be with my wife and baby. He knows he is protecting his babies from me.
I wonder if he thinks it strange... Blacks fighting for America. Did he know we existed there? Well, he would think it stranger if he knew America was fighting us. If he knew... I never rode in the front of the bus. If he knew... there were hundreds of towns where I could not be past sundown. If he knew... my grandfather's father was a slave. If he knew... they just killed Martin. I would love to pull this trigger and shoot... America.
There are so many things I want to tell him, but I cannot speak Vietnamese. So I put down my rifle, motion for him to stand... and tell him good-bye.
bridge
the difference between nazis and hutus is the nazis buried.
in the school where i hid last night, i could tell classroom grades by the skull sizes. i slept in a kindergarten because the blood stains were smaller. the hands of the teacher were clasped in prayer, though like her feet, unattached.
i was walking across a bridge of bleached formerly black, bloated bodies so tightly packed my trembling feet remained dry. although trying not to... my soles directed my eyes downward and there was the object of my search...
my oldest son.
Crucible of Civilization
The moment I arrived in Iraq I wanted to go home. I didn't care about patriotism, the president, or the U. S. of A.. I just wanted my mother to hold me like when I was a baby. Subconsciously, I knew once I got baptized in death in the Tigris and Euphrates, home would not exist any more.
My innocence was quickly lost like heads severed every morning on that Haditha bridge. Jesus shrunk and strung them on rosary beads where he kept score of the war but kept the logic of his calculus to himself.
Even He became post traumatically stressed and schizophrenically separated from the Holy Trinity... because we have come full cycle and this site of the Garden of Eden... and birthplace of Abraham now is the beginning of the end of the world.
Lost is the soul of this soldier. I am now hollowed out -- damaged goods -- good only for the muscle-memory of war; terrified to return to my innocent family... innocent like I was before I climbed off that plane. I do not want my children walking on this minefield of me.
