In Which I Serve as Outside Reader on General Petraeus’s Dissertation

[The current version of the Army’s Field Manual on Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, originated as a doctoral dissertation written by David Petraeus at Princeton.]

Premise flows from premise like water over the edge
of a waterfall, entrancing those not caught
in the turbid spray, those not lingering in the limestone
chutes that channel the first descent. Dulce et decorum,
those molecules in free fall, powerless to reverse
dictates of gravity, whether they be composed
of dollars or bodies. A theorist must maintain sense of scale,
must view war at an appropriate distance, so that its beauty
may emerge like a cold, perfect moon that draws the restless
from their beds with dreams of space flight. The best way to lie
is to get one big whopper on the table and move on quick
to crystalline truth after truth in a train of plausibility
so compelling we don’t see how down becomes
up, so convinced are we by the quality of our reasoning
that be leads to see and eventually to eff and tee, and the best
first lie aligns with ones we’ve already bought, like how we cheer
Frost’s traveler in the yellow woods longing for the road
not taken, nodding along with his glib boast that non-
conformity explains contingency because we can accept
failures chosen on noble grounds more than unforeseen
leaf-covered ways that erupt when footfalls complete
the circuit of pressure plate IEDs. Mr. Petraeus, your counterinsurgency
tools could only work in countries we didn’t create, republics not birthed
by death from above, and so I regretfully conclude
this dissertation presents the naked assertion of imperial power
as the contribution of a helpful guest, final proof that
intelligence and gulled innocence, in general, betray us.

Double Rainbow at Dawn, 15 North at the 10

The rubberneckers slow down
as they do for other hazards,
brake lights merging into
the penumbra of a double rainbow
due west of the traffic lanes,
while in the East the rising sun
irradiates vapor-soaked air.

We are all late, looking askance
at the fireworks of nature,
wondering how our priorities
match up with this display.

Double, not just one: two arcs
of vibrant color proclaiming
peace on earth if we
don’t kill each other
trying to take it in.

A VETERAN OBSERVES THE REPUBLIC AND REMEMBERS GINSBERG

America, I’ve given you all, and now I’m less than one percent.

America, fourteen-point-six-seven-five years of service I can’t characterize
as other than honorable,
three hundred ninety-one days pounding dirt in other people’s countries,
and one hundred seventeen sleepless nights per annum in perpetuity,
September 11, 2017.

America, I’m willing to renegotiate our social contract. I won’t complain about the clean bill of health
charged against me by the V.A., and you can stop involuntarily mobilizing memes of my demise
in support of indecent campaigns. America, believe me when I say
I’m not dead broke, I ain’t so straight, I’m not all white, and I don’t love hate.

America, when will you realize we are peopled with two-and-a-half times more
African Americans than veterans,
discounting three million souls in both tribes? Here I incorporate them all,
the ones hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, survivors whose lives matter,
because we both know the wary grief of looking at a uniform we paid for and wondering
whom the man beneath has sworn to protect and defend.

America, into this veteran poem I will take all the graduates of Columbine and Sandy Hook,
the ones who lived after having no answers for the warm muzzle of a gun, and their teachers,
especially the ones who ran toward shots. The hall of the American Legion
will overflow with such heroes, streaming like the blessed dead of Fort Hood and Chattanooga
across the Styx in Charon’s commandeered craft, the open door of welcome
forced, as always, by warriors still living.

America, let’s rent a cherry picker to take down the F in the V.F.W. sign,
let what is removed drop horribly in the pail. Police will gather in their surplus riot gear
and nod in understanding fashion, their years of service trailing them like a sentence,
arming them with arcane questions of whether civilians we protected yesterday will kill us today.
America, out of the sands of Kandahar and Ramadi, I go with them too.

Furthermore, America, in this election season, I go with righteous immigrants and refugees,
fellow sufferers of long journeys in inhumane transports that leave them in permanent pain.
O, my desperate ones, border-crossers of unwilling countries, you who pay taxes of sweat and fear,
you are not alien to me, or my thirty-five thousand brother and sister dreamers in green and khaki
fighting for something that isn’t wholly ours in dangerous places where we simply do our jobs.

America, when will you give Cyber Purple Hearts to all who have had their lives taken
out of your senile, digital grip,
starting with the twenty-four million whose secrets you’ve let slip into China’s voracious panda pocket?
We shall update and tweet ourselves feverish with the chant, “Uncle Sam is my Big Brother”
in protest of all those Xis and Putins and Snowdens and Kims
and Transnational Criminal Elements stealing our binary essence.
I’m not joking, America: I foresee the day when every iPhone will be issued with a trauma kit,
every laptop with a liability release for unauthorized remote access.

O America, my love, my burial plot, all this I will put in a phantom poem,
my own republic, for you to receive, a sea bag of sights unseen
to tumble down the ramp of a decommissioned C-130,
this empty box,
this absent limb.