Veterans Day

Photo taken by my mother of my father with myself ( he has his hands on my shoulders), my brothers and my father’s mother and her sister. We were living in Fort. St. John, BC, Canada. My father had deserted the USMC after his second tour in Vietnam. He was supposed to do a third tour, but my mother said she would leave him if he didn’t desert and take the family to Canada. But our home wasn’t a happy place. He suffered from untreated PTSD and could be terrifyingly violent. Shortly after that photo was taken my mother left him and took my brothers and I back to Pittsburgh, USA.

My father said to me once while drunk
that they’d made him into a Marine at Parris Island.
“And Rod”, he added “A Marine is a killer.”

I knew a lot of killers. I knew them
in living rooms, supermarkets, hardware stores,
schools, churches, taverns and all the daily places.
Few of them had been to prison,
except for cells behind their eyes
where they served life sentences,
with dead friends and enemies they’d killed.
Some taught me to play baseball, some taught
Sunday school, some taught me to fight, drink,
smoke cigarettes or chew snuff, to fish,
hunt, sing or shoot pool. Some showed me gentleness,
the value of silence, to use my mind,
to hate no one. Some taught me to fear people
with dark skin or people who worshipped
different gods. Some beat me or did worse things
I haven’t learned to talk about.
I knew a lot of killers. They were our fathers,
uncles and grandfathers. They were men
who worked in mines, mills,
barges and railroads. They were
men who never spoke to us
about the killing they were made to do.
Some were men who left their families
to wander from town to town like wild dogs
shot down by other killers
outside liquor stores or banks,
or to slowly die on bar stools
with a drink in their hands-

I knew a lot of killers. Today, I’m asked
to remember them,
when all they want to do is forget.