And that was when the young priest,
the young priest just out of the seminary,
opened the parish gym on week nights
to keep us off the streets,
wanted us to box and wrestle
and play basketball,
cornered us one by one
demanding to know how many times
since our last confession
we spilled our holy seed,
promised us paradise if we held our fists
out of our pants long enough
to wait and sacrifice.
And when
girls like Rosemary
from the convent school
poked against us
in the wild windy midnights,
their mothers in ragged gowns
hissing through cracks
in the screen doors,
girls like Rosemary
who panted until their skin shook,
then stepped back
because the good sisters implored them
not to step down,
sent us home feverish
to wait for something better,
and sacrifice.
And when
the police stalked us
though the glaring, dangerous streets
because we happened to be there,
Mexican, black, youngest family of ten,
and we searched alleys and trash bins
looking for booze or fistfights,
something to steal or break,
running from the young priest
who wanted us to box and wrestle
and play basketball,
tell him how many times that week
we hungered for girls like Rosemary
with their scented hair and the warm place
we could feel though their skirts,
and when the flashing red eye of patrol cars
turned a corner suddenly,
we hid under old Chevys,
ripped our shirts and our skin
rolling over fences
to escape being slammed against paddy wagons,
to escape being beaten into better boys,
willing and ready to sacrifice.
And when
the ex football player, the ex marine,
the All-Christian athlete campaigning for city council,
came to our school to tell us of the vision
he had for our future and explain
how he once felt as we did, felt he knew everything,
but now he knew better, knew how we could create
a better world and be like our forefather,
the founders of the Republic,
the great generals, the great frontiersmen
who believed in God, hard work and cash,
in being second to none,
and so could we
if we’d only listen and obey,
and sacrifice.
And just beyond those days
we woke one morning
in our sophomore year in college,
the last lambs of the nation of sheep,
to see the dream of our future
brighten under a banner headline
in the photograph of the rumpled carcass
of a helicopter gunship smoking human flesh
along a muddy road
in a place we never heard of, called
the Republic of South Vietnam.