| I lost count
Of the flag draped coffins at
One thousand seven hundred seventy-six
And with all our best young
Stone carvers trading in their chisels
For weapons
Now the backlog for a tombstone
Is seven years
But the names the names
Just keep coming and coming
As thick as tangled wire-grass
And these are only the dead
No one’s counting the Purple Hearts
The amputees, the skin graphs
The mind boggling number of minds boggled
By all this mess
Until yesterday I was on a lucky streak
Two thousand three hundred fifty-nine and counting
Daily I’ve been playing the Internet Casinos
Shuffling the casualties of war
And without a single personal loss
Today the Wheel of Fortune betrayed me
I should have bought a vowel
Instead of the posthumous letter "T"
I found in the name
Lance Corporal Samuel Tapia |
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