Art\u2019s buddy Galen said, \u201cMy mom\u2019s the poet. The famous poet.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never heard of her and didn\u2019t think much of poems; thought of Longfellow and long, long verses. And Tennyson.<\/p>\n
While Galen introduced himself Art dragged his girlfriend into Galen\u2019s bedroom. As the door closed, I wondered if Art\u2019s wife had an inkling about any of this.<\/p>\n
Art and I\u2019d been in the Marines together.<\/p>\n
After some prodding from Galen, I said I\u2019d fought the war and he told me he\u2019d break out the Chivas Regal and we\u2019d toast death.<\/p>\n
He thought a moment and then grinned, \u201cAnd life, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wondered about his mother and about the poem I recalled from school. The Charge of the Light Brigade.<\/p>\n
He asked me about being a Marine and I didn\u2019t tell him much. He told me a lot about running kief from Morocco to the Costa Del Sol in a tiny motorboat with two Arabs and a Catalan.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know about kief. He must have recognized my ignorance because he said, \u201cMade from weed, some bad shit, man, better than this.\u201d He hefted his class of Chivas.<\/p>\n
In Galen\u2019s bedroom Art hammered against the girlfriend while his wife took care of the boys back home.<\/p>\n
Galen laughed and yelled, \u201cTake it easy,\u201d and the headboard, or so I guessed, banged and banged. It sounded like war, not love, or even lust. The whack and hammer like combat\u2019s rhythm. Thump, thump, thump, thump.<\/p>\n
And the lines marched into my mind from the poem I\u2019d been forced to memorize in Mr. Telep\u2019s sixth grade class: the poem from Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade.<\/p>\n
I blurted, \u201cHalf a league, half a league, half a league onward. All in the valley of death rode the six hundred. \u2018Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!\u2019 he said. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n
Galen\u2019s eyes blinked like a machine gun\u2019s stutter. He swirled his Chivas and mumbled something\u2014I couldn\u2019t hear it well over the racket of wild fucking in the bedroom. Maybe he said, \u201cMother would never have written that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But then he hefted his glass and yelled, \u201cWar.\u201d<\/p>\n
I imagined Art\u2019s wife changing diapers. \u201cCharge for the guns,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
His eyes blinked like a machine gun\u2019s stutter. He swirled his Chivas and mumbled something\u2014I couldn\u2019t hear it well over the racket of wild fucking in the bedroom. Maybe he said, \u201cMother would never have written that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3139,2621,1340,264,25,671],"class_list":["post-18573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-drug-running","tag-fiction","tag-flash","tag-infidelity","tag-poetry","tag-war","writer-ken-rodgers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19285,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18573\/revisions\/19285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}