WEEKEND WARRIORS
“Take a load off, Fanny…”
Tony’s guitar leading us in the chorus
and all of us baying it at the moon
“...take a load for free...”
and Henry’s hash pipe (or Percy’s bong)
making the rounds ’round Charlie Company’s
campfire bellowing its volleys of Fourth of July
sparks up through the evergreen boughs to
the one a.m. stars …
“take a load off, Fanny…”
we happy hippies, legal draft-dodgers
“and…”
in the perfect disguise: identical
fatigues and field-jackets,
“and…”
non-regulation-length hair swept
clandestinely under our caps
“and…”
hiding in plain sight in National Guard armories
and summer trainings out here in the woods…
“you put the load (you put the load)
right on me!”
Flames glinting wildly in our saucer-wide pupils
glinting off the empty Colt 45 cans and other dead
soldiers cobblestoning the pine-needled forest floor
... but boy, when those blanks I’d surreptitiously
unloaded into the campfire’s flames
(seemed like a good idea at the time)
finished ‘cooking’ and opened fire,
zinging sizzling brass shell casings
every which way in sporadic bursts,
ricocheting off hapless “happy campers”
amid hoots and yelps and gales and gales
of laughter— life was warm and wonderful
because it was summer and I was skunk-drunk…
because the Acapulco gold really was magical…
because life had become this M*A*S*H comedy
where everything I had to say was funny as hell…
and because I didn’t have an inkling,
I guess, that I was really just
annoying pain in the ass...
