Michael Foldes
(USA)
boys playing with guns
when ed shot me in the leg
it stung like hell and i
screamed what the fuck
did you do that for?
i was sure when i heard
he went to vietnam
and returned a hero
he’d done the same
to who knows how many
viet cong… or vietnamese,
combatants or not.
i see photographs
of ed in a rocking chair
with grandchildren
to his name and wonder
what his life would be like
without the stains, if
he would have felt
the same purpose
without having put
his life on the line.
i wrestle with this
like we wrestled as boys,
steeling ourselves,
shooting each other
with b-b guns, hunters
getting ready
for the big game.
other days
i wonder what
i missed, and nights
that answer nothing
you want to know about.
my friend
my friend who has not been to war
put war into words. while i still hear
the muffled roar of cannon on his pages
the sound of people dying is not there.
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Mike Foldes is an electronics sales engineer specializing in electronic displays and power sources, including medical video display and signal management equipment for operating rooms and other medical facilities. A graduate of The Ohio State University in anthropology, he has edited and published magazines, poetry anthologies, chapbooks, alternate newspapers, technical publications, and was an editor and columnist with Gannett newspapers in Binghamton, NY. He is founder and managing editor of Ragazine.cc, the online magazine of art, information & entertainment; author of Sleeping Dogs: A true story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping …” (Split Oak Press, Ithaca, NY, 2012; Smashwords; Amazon), and Sandy: Chronicles of a Superstorm, a forthcoming volume of poetry and images in collaboration with artist Christie Devereaux. He sits on the advisory board of the Campaign for an Informed Citizenry (http://www.cicorg.com), and the poetry committee of “We Are You Project” (http://bit.ly/18iXpsD). His articles, editorials, poems and stories have appeared in publications worldwide, some in translation into Romanian, Hungarian, French and Spanish. He and his wife Margot have three grown children.