JEEP
Anmole Prasad

Many wars are fought 
across the mediocre 
foxholes of the head 
Peacetime for me flickered 
in grainy black and white 
enlargements of the times 

Arriving with LIFE magazines 
guns we never knew 
napalm that never seared my back 
Still archived in the raw 
footage and newsprint 
of my greying library 

And amongst them, the marine 
in canvas and steel 
The rhombus of his jaw 
engaging gum 
Like a tank grinding a child 
over the rice fields 

Marine 
strait-jacketed in canvas 
And a steel helmet askew 
A toadstool yearning for the sun 
 

 II 

Peacetime can make a cunt of you 
Make a big empty hole 
in your heart where 
the secret murderer hides 

Even now not even as in a dream 
I glance up from the garden 
and see it limned 
by the October sky 

Lurching over the rise from Pedong 
The canvas top canted 
by the weight of young men 
bristling on the tailboard like weaponry 

The sun flinches off a careless glint 
of grease and confident smiles 
On faces lost 
to black leather and chains 
The denim-caressed knife that claims 
the first blow in 
after the movie 
at Novelty cinema 

His catenary back is buckled 
under the press of people 
But he’s not a bodybag yet 
returned to the tarmac 
from the belly of a B-52 

Mobile as a wheelchair 
the catheter linking 
his carb to the stinking 
jerrycan in the front seat 

He’s too old for fear now 
the green leached out of him 
since the sixties 

Mumbling a four-wheel incantation 
he descends the road to Kalimpong 
Unable even 
to hold his piss.