War
for Daniel Anderson
Daniel has a stripper girlfriend he says he likes them tall & I overstand all of it the man’s been in combat he’s seen what can I tell you he knows the need for a transcendent blues relief honed by the Blues-People the Indian my brother-man now got indigenous blues my brother-man genocide survivor joined the army airborne paratrooper delta force fought wars most Americans never know are happening in anywhere-South America they wore the black fatigues & carried no American weapons Heckler-&-Koching with the proprietors the black market gun-runners of militias & drug dealers & everybody in the black-dressed-unit speaks Español in the bush wandering-wondering-what-hell-had-happened-before he arrived you can’t ask that crap in a Black-Ops-Unit where nobody wears any insignia there was the pressure that always right there a commandeering pressure a country & western Oklahoma pan-handled twang of pressure the poet a-bottle-of-cold-beer knife-fighter his badge a 3-inch left arm swatch blade-shaved above his outer-wrist the pressure always been within that black-dressed-unit Daniel says he hopes his shaman ol’ man continues building the heat to sweat him & cleanse him of the blood & help him heal.
Copyright © 2025 by Gary Copeland Lilley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 21, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The poem ‘War’ is dedicated to my good friend Daniel Anderson, whom I met in ’97 at the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences. It was a retreat about ‘poetry of witness’ that began with combat veterans of Vietnam. From the Joiner Institute, we both were mentored by Keith Wilson, a veteran poet who had been the only officer from the Naval Academy to be an active-duty protester of Vietnam. I’m a Navy veteran submariner. Daniel was in the Army Special Forces and had seen multiple combat tours in secret places where unknown wars are fought.”
—Gary Copeland Lilley