One more of my grandpas. I’ll post my own stuff when I’m not in a general malaise.

The Secret

Why weep for what cannot
Be? Instead I have a special
Secret, my covert ace; an ultimate
Hidey-hole that is only mine.

How hard to remember the few
Happy days when the soul suffers.
Youth and dreams have crept away’
My once-proud maleness is a neuter.

And what remains unabated is rage.
You who scorned me with casual
Malice: with a handful of pills,
I can blow you all to hell.

Note here, Grandpa was at one point on lithium and an entire cabinet full of other antipsychotic/antidepressant drugs, no doubt leading to impotence.

Anyhow, one more for the road.

Atrocity

Okinawa, August, ‘45: Three Jap
Soldiers run into a cave. I tell
The Major. He marches up the hill
Waving his pistol and yelling: “Come

Down and have steak with us!”
Followed by a rag-tag army of clerks,
Technicians, and drunken cooks. The
Nips are caught in a deadly cross-fire.

They are unarmed. We see their bloody
Service caps. I wasn’t then, but now
I’m sorry. After all, they could have
Been old men like me now. Grandfathers.

These poems were written by Henry Marvin Walker, my grandfather.