War Makes You Dead

War makes you dead.
Every sin’s real fresh.
Nam, Garden of Evil.
None of it happened.
None of it.

War is drudgery.
The guys can’t cope.
For a time no one spoke.
Not hardly. Not once.
There is no rectitude whatsoever.

War is also mystery.
Amazing. A new wrinkle.
There was not a name yet for it.
Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.
The vapors suck you in.

War is thrilling
A corresponding proximity to life.
Like cancer under a microscope.
A powerful, implacable beauty.
The immense pleasure of aliveness.

War makes you a man

It was still alive
Things are purely living
The aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference
Just a trite bit of puffery

This one wakes me up.