I wrote the below poem titled "Cigar" after returning home from Iraq in 2005. I returned home in December, so I must have wrote the poem in 2006 or 2007. I don't remember which. It was first published at New Verse News in January 2008.

Image from Pixabay

You'll notice the poem has somewhat of a bitter tone, not a sweet one like a lot of cigars. It is, I guess I'll admit, a sort of bittersweet homage to the politics of war.

It's difficult being a veteran and having reservations about the manner in which your voluntary service was used. Not many people understand the position. If you speak your mind against a war, any war, many other veterans (and the gung-ho military worshipers) will accuse you of hating your country. On the other hand, if you praise the military, or service members, for anything at all, then the peaceniks and military-industrial antagonizers accuse you of being a Nazi warmonger imperialist. I'm neither of those, I can assure you.

My Time In The Service

I've got two DD214s on my record, the document that records one's service period and lets the world know whether you served honorably or otherwise. Both of my docments indicate an honorable service record.

The first enlistment was from 1984 to 1987. I joined the Army right out of high school, mainly to get away from my verbally abusive father. It was also my ticket to college using the Veterans Education Assistance Program.

When I told my friends I was joining the Army, no one believed it. I graduated high school all of 120 pounds. I came out of basic training weighing 140. Then I went to administrative assistant school, Airborne school, and then to my unit assignment with the First Special Forces Group in Fort Lewis, Washington. Those three years were some of the best years of my life. My enlistment term ended in June 1987. That fall, I enrolled in college.

My second tour in the military came after a 10-year hiatus. It was 1997, Bill Clinton was president, and I was working on building my career in journalism. I got the bright idea to join the National Guard and go to Officer Candidate School (OCS). It turned out to be one of the biggest miscalculations of my life.

I had noticed that terrorist attacks were getting closer to home, and I'd also noticed that our military was being used for nation-building and peace-keeping exercises more often. I didn't want anything to do with that. Rather, I was developing a desire to be of service to my local and state communities. Therefore, I thought the National Guard would be a good place to be.

It wasn't really for me. Several times, I thought about getting out. OCS was one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer for about 18 months. After a long wait, I served six months on active duty while attending the Armor Officer Basic Course. In the summer of 2004, my unit was called into active duty and we spent 2005 in Iraq fighting an insurgency that never should have happened. Just my luck. I found myself doing things I had no interest in and never got to be of service to my local and state governments as I intended. Donald Rumsfeld's comment, "You go to war with the Army you have," might have sit well with me if the war was a necessary one.

Nevertheless, I served. One year in Iraq and I came home, proffered my resignation, and got on with life. It didn't help that my wife and I married just six months before receiving my activation orders.

Every soldier joins the military knowing there is a possibility of war. It's a risk we take, but we hope that the war we find ourselves in is a war that makes sense. I tried my best, after returning home, to put it behind me. I started a business, found myself raising a couple of grandkids, and resumed writing poetry. One of those poems was "Cigar."

What 'Cigar' Means To Me

I wrote "Cigar" because I had fond memories of myself and two other captains with whom I served standing outside under the Iraqi night time sky shooting the breeze and smoking cigars. No matter what I thought of the situation, our mission, or my chain of command, these moments of comeraderie were some of the best times. They were simple moments, but ones worth cherishing.

The three of us were battle captains, the eyes and ears of the battalion commander. That meant we had limited decision-making capacity on his behalf based on his pre-emptive guidance. It's a staff position, which isn't one set with much glory but an important one for missional effectiveness. We took it in eight hour shifts until the senior captain among us was promoted to assistant operations officer, then we were on for 12 hours and off for 12. I liked the longer shifts better.

Cigar time made it worth it. Captain B, Captain S, and myself would step outside the Tactical Operations Center (TOC), leaving it in the hands of our capable noncommissioned staff, and enjoy a cigar along with some fine gentlemanly conversation. This happened right at dark, a couple of hours after my shift and a couple of hours into Captain S's. We talked about everything you'd expect Army officers to talk about, and some things you might shake your head at. It was our time, and we committed it to the leaves.

So you'll hear in these lines the soft nod to this comeraderie with a few ironic political jabs, first a right then a left, and finally an uppercut as I allude to some historical values that represent our American spirit implying, of course, that our current imperialism has turned its back on those values.

I don't deny it carries a political message, but it's one beset with a definite stand on a moral principle that doesn't get mentioned. And the language, I cannot write a poem without infusing it with word play that matches the content. I take certain liberties with punctuation that I've not seen in contemporary poetry, and I'm proud of that. It is indicative of the unique literary voice that wells up from my middle-aged soul.

In a poem like this, you'd expect a metaphor. You might even expect the poem itself to be a metaphor. And I won't deny that the whore (think of how it sounds -- with a hard 'W') could be something of a symbol, virtually everything in these lines, every little word, points to something real and actual. As that master of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, who loved to turn every image in a dream into a symbol, once said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Even so, there's something manly about a fat stogie. And this one's on me. Have a cigar.

Image from Pixabay

Cigar

Drawn out deep,
like the upward concerns
of an intern. Captains delight
in late night fatties, blue skies
dressed in vanilla, and star-
crossed lips ladled with love stains.
Free soil built this land. Death

may dance in the sun
but I’m taxed. Hand me a bill
of sale, this whore has the whole
damned country by the balls.
The king may know his legacy,
but where are his clothes, mind you?

The Right Wing spins
a new face while the Party
reminisces and the world
is made safe. For

democracy
is a costly business,
liberty a puff of smoke
in a courtroom.

Battlefield worms like us
seek security in slow-poppin’ cherries
and close calls,

rockets red glaring past our bedtimes.
I’m fed the hell up with Hillians casting lots,
forgetting to shed light
on this year’s stale,
burned-out
two-party topic.

#cigar #haveacigar #poetsunited

I'd be honored if you'd check out my other poems:

• Music
• The Ballad of the Crustacean King
• Nocturne: Battlefield Sonnet
• Tattoo
• 20 Acres
• The Journeymaker's First and Last Hope
• Old Goth

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