13 Weeks Can Be Unlucky

13 Weeks Can Be Unlucky.

I dismember

boot camp often, 

when that sweet,

oyster rot, swamp smell

native only to Parris Island,

comes back to haunt me.

I sometimes hash

over the marks it left in my life,

both the good and the bad.

Driven in a Trailways bus

full of the odors of bologna and B.O.

in the wee hours of mourn,

then harrassed from our cramped 

upright sleeping racks,

by a trio of screaming banshees

in campaign hats, stampeding us out.

I was the *"shitfuck numbnuts"

*(direct quote by the way) 

who thought it would be O.K.

to take a drink from the

water cooled scuttlebut,

I payed for those three sips

with a clout across my stupid head,

plus I had stand at attention

for my major fucking malfunction 

and do fifty pushups everytime

the N.C.O.'s took a drink.

I never saw so many

parched instructors,

slipping me an evil grin 

as they slurped away,

and I hit the deck

for some more pain.

I was also a skinny body,

always given double portions of chow, 

and pretty much forced to eat it,

I remember eating the food

in four squared motions,

plate, to front of face,

front of face, to mouth,

mouth to front of face,

and back to the plate,

with "EYES FRONT"

at all times.

Then they ran all the calories

off of me in three mile, full gear 

double time marches.

But I did like the drills 

in the early light

of dawn with the sing song,

chanted cadence of the D.I's

voice blending with

the scritch scratch,

left right shuffle of

hundreds of boots

all snapping together.

I can still hear his bass rumble

soulfully singing out,

"Eeeee, low rot letch,

rot cho letch

rot letch, right cho letch……."


I recall one sad recruit

who had the letters -F- U- C- K- 

tattooed on his right hand fingers,

Every time he saluted an officer,

he pissed them off,

He spent 39 weeks in boot camp

before he finally got out.

Worse thing they ever called me

was an illiterate scrotum,

That was a low blow,

as if it wasn't bad enough

to be a scrotum....but illiterate!


We had a kid die

on the rifle range, 

funny how you remember his face,

but not his name 

He was positioned at 200 yards,

that shot came from 500, 

hit him square in the back

while he was qualifying 

with an M-14 rifle.

The grass around him

 
was a scarlet mess

but whoever killed him

didn’t miss, and was never caught.

Then there were

the gooney birds,

Laughing at us in formations 

Outside the Quonset hut

during inspections.

"Weh -eh, Weh- eh, We- eh,"

One of them crapped on

my utility cap when the lieutenant

was two men away.

He eyeballed me and smirked

as that bird doo-doo ran down 

my cheek, into my lips and

under my chin, but I never flinched.

There are worse things to digest,

if you make any

unnecessary motion in combat.


I don’t see many of the guys

from boot, a lot of them died

claiming land we gave back,

But then came back

and claimed it again. 

But I think of them when

the August sun melts

sweat down my back,

and when the flag on my pole

in my yard flaps hard

in the wind like the colors

used to snap for platoon 237.

Fireworks make me melancholy,

so many look like tracer 

bullets going up.

And I still get an itch to

click some dope then figure

the elevation and wind

on a long shot I would love to take.

One hollow point gut buster

fired with glee into

the tiny balls of 
Monsters like Putin

and one more into his

garbage trap mouth thereby

ending any further offspring

or mocking of our nation.

Should send a Marine

sniper to take him out,

 
with no warning,

No asking the U.N.’s

frickin permission,

Just a clean, quick shot,

then maybe there wouldn’t be

invasions of independent countries

for a long time to come.

Just one dead scum

sucking maggot

Who got Semper Fried!