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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

____________________________________________

 

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.