FIVE POEMS
VA Hospital
Tommy and Jimmy
Tomb Welts
Impresario
Margie
VA Hospital
Patience she says
As she shows fingernails so long
She must punch her computer keys
With a rubber-tipped pen
Patience she says
Wagging her green lacquered fingers
As she continues rapid-fire talk
With her son on her cell phone
Interrupting herself
She announces patience
No appointments for three weeks
The doctors are very busy
Join the quiet vacant-eyed
Patient veterans of America’s wars
Men run over by our own trucks
Ignored by overworked aides
Men in wheelchairs
Some without arms or legs or eyes
Heroes cowards
Ordinary soldiers
Waiting
Patient
While she chatters
Tommy and Jimmy
On the troopship
Steaming to the sunset
Under Golden Gate Bridge
Worrying about marauding subs
Also remembering
The previous night
In the dark hallway
Of an unused army barrack
Grinding sweating
Sucking greedily on the tongue
Of the uniformed WAC*
Who called herself Tommy
Tommy’s friend Jimmy
A uniformed WAC
Stood guard
The soldier worried that his fly buttons
Would take awkwardly long to refasten
If MPs appeared
After a while Jimmy warned
They had to move on
The women soldiers went off
Smoking
Chatting
Arm in arm
* Women’s Army Corps
Tomb Welts
Men moved sullenly
On the front line
In light drizzle
A long damp night loomed
No fires to heat coffee
To dry out socks
The snug Okinawan tombs
On the side of the hill
Beckoned
Funeral urns inside
Sat solemnly
In the musty air
Next morning
The urns seemed to smile
As we scratched and scratched
Bands of itching red welts
On our waists necks
Ankles wrists
Reminders
That we had been safe and dry
But not alone
Most soldiers talk about girls
Drink beer
Play cards
Alan had no time for such frivolity
He was always volunteering
To arrange entertainment for soldiers
Constant smile broken-toothed
From when he tripped and fell
On his ever-present trumpet
Hair drooping over one eye
He had charmed Army barbers
Into leaving him a little wooly
Fifty years later
I wondered what had happened to him
Sent a letter through his agent
He wrote back
Didn’t remember changing my life
With jazz and Sweet Lorraine
Told of swapping his horn for pencil
Announced he had accumulated
“Neither girth nor gloom”
His letter did not include a return address
When the Japanese came
Margie and her grandparents
Fled to family in the hills
When the Americans came
Margie moved back
To her seamstress aunt in the city
Fifteen-year-old Margie and I talked
Through many soft Filipino evenings
While her aunt sat cutting and sewing
Some nights Margie would take me
To the flimsy shack on the outskirts
Of the bomb-ravaged town
To watch expats guide barroom waifs
Around the creaking bamboo floor
To scratchy pre-war tango records
She said no to her friends
Who asked her to join them
Escorting beery bloodshot survivors
But this young girl carrying laundry
Was an easy mark for the MP
Riding around in a command car
His accusation of prostitution
Would amount to criminal conviction
She had to submit
A few weeks later
I didn’t recognize her at first
High heels bright red lipstick
She said hello
Wouldn’t sit
At my table
She danced with other soldiers
Disappeared now and then
Returned eyes moist
On my way back to barracks
I saw Auntie cutting and sewing
By the flickering kerosene lamp
was born in 1925 in Jersey City. He served in the Pacific Theater of World War II from September 1943 to April 1946 and was awarded the Purple Heart in the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945. He received a BA from Harvard in 1949 and an MBA from Harvard in 1951. He was employed in industry marketing, finance, and management from 1951 to 1981 and was Professor at NYU Stern School of Business Administration from 1982 to 2003. In 2003, facing a serious medical procedure, he began writing poems, and has written more than 2,000 of them. He has lived in New York City since the early 1950s.