Perhaps partly from my reading of comic books at the time, specifically the Legion of Super Heroes set in the future, I always thought of the Vietnam War in cosmic terms. Also, throughout high school, I checked out from the South Gate High School library, read constantly, and carried around for months, the Time-Life science book: THE UNIVERSE. It was filled with remarkable and colorful images and fantastic notions of black holes and theories about a potentially expanding and contracting universe.
Most of my poetry later in the decade utilized the terminology and those cosmic concepts that had excited my imagination in high school. Perhaps it was also a form of escape from the realities of being drafted and sent off to a war that was using up U.S. forces endlessly in a war that might not end before it was my time to serve.
Reserves
Your silence scorns our uniforms
now that the planets are taken.
Our guns drain whole star clusters
and you have never raised them.
We have launched galaxies at one another,
shredding them in the infinite,
as we bloat the bounds of battle.
There must be some forgotten front
in need of wasting units.
Most of my poetry later in the decade utilized the terminology and those cosmic concepts that had excited my imagination in high school. Perhaps it was also a form of escape from the realities of being drafted and sent off to a war that was using up U.S. forces endlessly in a war that might not end before it was my time to serve.
Reserves
Your silence scorns our uniforms
now that the planets are taken.
Our guns drain whole star clusters
and you have never raised them.
We have launched galaxies at one another,
shredding them in the infinite,
as we bloat the bounds of battle.
There must be some forgotten front
in need of wasting units.
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