Veteran
©1986 Andrew Calhoun, recorded on Hope.
Written on the coldest day in Missouri history, the train signals froze and I wrote this in the waiting room. It was triggered by a brief clip of a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War that I saw on TV.
Do you love a gander?
Do you love a goose?
Are you chief commander?
Is your body loose?
Do you love a genie?
Do you love a snake?
Do you and John and Benny
Grab at once, or alternate?
My time is your time
My life is yours to see
Our life is echoed mountains
Our space is memory
See me in your high school yearbook
See me at your senior prom
See me fresh out of the army
See me home from Vietnam
See our house be broken
See our bed spinning round
Our life is leaf and hopes
See little armies shoot them down
Little armies on the sidewalk
Helicopters overhead
Spinning near where you and I talk
Kill the living, wake the dead
See the body in the ocean
See the woman on the quay
Life and love and tender tears
And melancholy ecstasy
See me walking with a placard
See me throw my badge away
See me very truly sorry
See me broken anyway
We are moving westward
We are breaking camp
See our silence fester
See us cold and damp
Skinny Susan, are you happy
Skinny Susan, are you sad
Skinny Susan, do you love me
Are you dead or sick or mad?
Mine is the crying mountain
Mine the deadly blow
Mine the dry fountain
Mine, the din below
Mine, the silver shadow
Mine, the lone machine
Mine, the revolving echo
Poison oak and kerosene
Will you love a killer?
Will you take a chance?
Screwdriver and a chaser
Would you like to dance
Will you forgive a table
Will you forgive a shoe
Do you forgive the rain
For serenading down on you
Do you forgive the sunrise
Coming on a troubled house
Do you forgive the mousetrap
Or the landlord, or the mouse