Thank You For Your Service
Thank You For Your Service
Jay Wenk
Sample Poem
My War Ended
During a soft May Day in
Czechoslovakia.
The Germans were done.
Safe now, birds returned,
trilling, fluttering around my head,
seeking sustenance for tomorrows.
Then, I was homeward bound,
unaware the French
were destroying a world
to regain a cushy colony,
unaware that Truman bought our way into Vietnam
to the tune of 4 billion,
secret music the French would waltz with, and
unaware the Korean quadrilles
were being composed.
Heroes trekked to Canada, while
Harry’s heirs tangoed over the jungles.
Reverberations of their tunes left
common folk withered,
and their trees and food and homes,
birds again taking wing to hidden places.
Today, these ancient Danses Macabre continue in
the Golden Triangle, where peace-proclaiming
leaders’ lies lubricate
the Birthplace of Civilization, compressing it with
greed into Civilization’s tomb.
Me, clueless, all those juddering decades ago.
My war
never ended, never will.
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Jay Wenk is a man of courage and heart, the kind of liberal we no longer see but should strive to become, of action not just words- a military warrior on the battlefield, and a political warrior at home. His story deserves to be told and retold. ─Shalom Auslander, author of Foreskins Lament, Beware Of God, Hope, A Tragedy, and other books.
…Suffusing Wenk’s story is a will to maintain his personal integrity, his honor, and even his sense of humor in the midst of death and destruction. ─Edward Sanders, recipient of the American Book Award for Poetry, 1987, author of The Family (a history of the Manson group murders) America, a History in Verse, Sharon Tate, and other books.