On This Day I Approach MY 59th Year--
A Ballade
The Vietnam war was goin' on
And I was at Fort Hood
Sometimes feeling pretty sad.
Most times pretty good.
I'll sing of soldiers in the rain
And how its sometimes pretty hard
And tell you how it was so strange
On Tank Destroyer Boulevard.
I reported to the Orderly Room
To good old Major Moore.
Who said to me “Goddammit, son
Why don’t you close the door?
I about faced and about faced
The Major Moore put on his hat.
Said “Sergeant Green, I’m leaving now
Don’t let out the cat.”
I stood there in amazement
He said, “That damn cat talks Latin.”
He's ugly, mean and crazy
And his name in General Patton.”
Now, I know the General Reader
Will cry out sans belief.
But Major Moore strode out that door
With his secret grief.
He had just returned from Vietnam
And was thinking “Fuck the Army.”
And he was not the only one.
All of us were barmy.
Major Moore went out the door
To his Buddha garden.
The Buddha looted from Saigon
When Major Moore was parting’.
He had two guys assigned just there
To care for the flowers and trees.
You don’t believe me? I don’t care.
This was the Seventies.
I went back to the Orderly Room
Right up to the company clerk.
“Jesus Christ what is my doom?
Where do I go for work?”
The company clerk stopped typing.
Said, “Here take a look at this.”
It was a novel he was writing
Entitled: “The Last Kiss.”
“It’s set in 1984
When everyone is dead
Except for a boy and his little dog.”
That’s really what he said.
He look at me inquiringly
As he adjusted his toupee.
He was a Mormon and a novelist
And, quite bitterly, was gay.
And he played fine jazz piano
In a melancholy way.
I read the page and looked at him
And pronounced the writing fine.
He perked right up. Said, “My name is Jim.
Do you really like the final line?”
I looked at Jim quite closely
And felt that I had no choice.
And said in a voice quite ghostly
“It makes me think of Joyce.”
The I picked up my duffel bag
And headed out the door
And I seemed to hear a Joplin rag
As I saw who I stood before.
It was Sergeant Major Gilmore Davis
Who said, “Boy, put down your gear
And go back and get a pair of pliers
And bring them over here.”
Sergeant Major Gilmore Davis!
In his Gilmore Davis way
Had a face like “Jesus Save Us!”
But a smile like Sugar Ray.
Last days in Army service
He’s been in since ’44.
And you’ll think he might be nervous
With all the shit he did endure.
World War Two and then Korea
Three tours of Vietnam
But you have the wrong idea
He was mellow. He was calm.
He took the pliers. Said, “Come with me.”
We went to the Rec room.
Where he adjusted the TV
Until Nat Cole began to croon.
“Stay here, boy” he said to me.
But he didn’t mean it meanly.
“After Andy Williams.
We’ll watch “I Dream of Jeannie.”
I went out into the Fort Hood night
With my gear upon my shoulder.
Humming “Mama, It’s Alright”
I had a chance of getting older.
I was there near the Second Armor
And the First Cavalry.
A screw-up in a lost brigade
In a Lost Company.
The Cobras shivered above us.
The tanks drove down the road.
And left us alone. God loved us.
Just like he loved Tom Joad.
I got assigned to language school
To that strange faculty
Or draftees, drunks and derelicts
Teaching deportees:
Wives brought back to the USA
From Korea and Vietnam
From little villes and long lost hills
From Seoul and from Saigon.
So they could work in restaurants
Or dance in topless clubs
And smoke opium in trailers
And give those fine “back rubs.”
One day Captain Thomas
Came looking for his wife.
"Where’s that gook bitch? I’ll kill her!"
Then he took his life.
And she got all of his insurance.
She had quite a business sense.
And opened up a pawnshop
With Sergeant Gilkey, hence
Her marriage to the Sergeant
Which followed hard upon
The orders Sergeant Gilkey
Got to go to Vietnam.
And when he was listed missing
And then he turned up dead
She said “I was always lucky lucky.”
And then was quickly wed
To the guy across the street
Who had the Army Surplus store.
If you don’t find that just and meet
It's what this country’s for.
She was in my English class
Before these sad events.
It was time for her to give a speech
And she seemed somewhat tense.
“I was at the movie.
On Tet. We in Saigon.
Big noise. Scream everywhere.
Go up a big bomb.
Kill everyone. My mother!
My mother, my sister died.”
She looked at me and then sat down
And never never cried.
And I remember young John Kostovich.
He was from Chicago.
He had a Ford Econo--Hippie van
With the usual strange cargo.
On one side was the Peace Sign.
On the other side a frog
And underneath that was the line
”Onward through the Fog!”
He drove that van to Mexico
And came back with some grass.
He told me “Joe, I wanted to just go.
They all can kiss my ass.”
And I remember him a year from then.
On the phone. I heard him scream.
“My brother got killed in Fucking “Nam.”
It all seems like a dream.
He ran right out. Got in the van.
Screaming all the way.
Jim Linden said to me
“Do you think he’ll be ok?”
He got a “compassionate discharge.”
And then in 71.
I got a letter. “I’m living large.
Up here in Oregon.”
The real war was still going on.
Sergeant Davis said “You losers.
Grab your packs and get you guns.
We’re going on maneuvers.”
I was in charge of our two squads.
Prayed “God, I thee implorest.
Enlighten all the little gods
To get us lost inside the forest.”
I told my guys. “We’ll need a lot of beer
For this goddamn fake war
And guitars and books and a lot of grass.
What are you waiting for?”
So we drove off in our Army truck
And I did not feel bereft.
Said “Damn, I can’t believe our luck.”
They turned right... then we turned left.
The real war was still going on.
The fake war did not alarm us.
I lounged outside in the Texas sun
In my Grateful Dead pajamas.
I had brought along “Ulysses.”
Joyce was always such a charmer.
But I lounged outside in that Texas breeze
Reading Philip Jose Farmer.
And that night Tom played his guitar.
Beneath the Texas moon.
So far away from the real war.
“Lay Down Your Weary Tune.”
“Lay down your weary tune, lay down,
Lay down the song you strum,
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum.”
Thirty years ago and more.
Some are dead. All to me are gone so long.
What in hell was all that for?
I end this weary song.
“Lay down your weary tune, lay down,
Lay down the song you strum,
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum.”
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