Letter to Cole
Anthony J. Albright
Dear Cole,
Don’t join the Army.
My son, you are too good
to kill, kill, kill, without mercy.
You are too handsome to beat your face.
You see too clearly to follow blindly.
You ask too many questions to stop
asking fucking questions.
Dear Cole,
Do what makes you breathe, inspire,
aquire a fire that makes you shine.
Find a special talent and use it,
only choose it for yourself.
Let no one else tell you
to put your dreams on the shelf.
Dear Cole,
War is not glory
it’s a gory mess of regrets
tempest-uous times of flying
from one place to another
not looking for a lover,
but always a fight.
It’s not right, son,
to visit the whole world
but only with a gun, son.
Dear Cole,
Don’t be cold-hearted.
Don’t go to places uncharted
and steal their joy.
Be a good boy now;
do as I say, not as I did.
And maybe there’ll be hope for your kids
to grow up with a father,
not just a ghost in a flesh suit:
unused cannon-fodder.
Yawp
Anthony J. Albright
Meandering mind manages to hold
simultaneous synchronized conceits of growing mold
we shoulder older folds in fat futile brains
useless parts pruned with age
but gracing takes a long spacer of time to arrive
at anything advantageous by which time we’ve derived
a million new uses a billion new lives
is it any wonder we’ll never get out alive?
Not by striving, saving, or starving can we deprive
fate of the moment we die.
Belying our myth of survival we tell our minds
that preparing promises better odds of perpetual breath.
In duress, the illusion eases the tempest of clouded mind
long enough to assuage ominous nature of arduous trials,
enabling us to smile at death when it comes to call
and forestall inevitable trials and tests. Just
guests on this planet we gather assuming erroneously
that our lives matter. Shattered perceptions come
to call us all back to bare, broken reality.
We shall, you’ll see, bring vidi, vici, victory,
in the air, on land, or at sea,
to be or not to be doesn’t matter.
You flatter yourself to believe
you’ll be around to see
the yet inevitable end of me.
Choctaw Poet Dr. Anthony J. Albright served in the US Army’s 1st Special Forces Group. He received a BA in Theatre from University of Minnesota, an MA in Theatre from the University of North Dakota, and a Ph D in Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture from North Dakota State University. Much of his academic writing focuses on disentangling identity from other aspects of humanity that interfere with the ability of veterans and other marginalized people to heal and grow in their self-image. He has been published in North Dakota Quarterly, Northern Narratives, Northern Ecclecta, Beyond Parallax, and other poetic and literary magazines and journals. He currently lives in the Twin Cities Metro Area.
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