How old were you in 1992?
I was 18, and I was not an infantryman
Yet at Christmas time I flew to war
On comet, on cupid, on Donner, and Blitzen
...And into Mogadishu on a Hercules
I was not an infantryman

News cameras and equitorial black faces swarmed us at the airport
Chanting, USA! USA!

At night, mortars would fall
Shaking the ruined walls we reclined behind,
Death, daring us to sleep
Always the shit-smell of the air
Would hang visible on short final
Short final - about to hit ground
In 1992 I was 18
And I was not an infantryman

That place couldn't keep up with all the death I saw
Bodies would lay atop each other in the streets,
Along with camels and dogs,
And brass shell casings and spent RPG tubes
It would percolate and boil and bake and steam,
And sometimes explode
We'd scramble for cover
I was not an infantryman

I was not an infantryman,
Any killing that I did
Came later
In a bottle,
In a letter,
In a whorehouse,
In a thousand ways,
Thousands of miles away
After friend and foe,
lover and stranger,
right and wrong and Jesus Christ
Just didn't matter anymore.

I was not an infantryman
I didn't get to fire back
When sniper fire would shatter the ramp concrete into powder at our heels
As we worked to offload the tools of conflict
Or upload the injured and the dead...the only spoils of war I ever saw, but...
I was not an infantryman

That little war of my youth
gets lost, over looked
Between the faded flag confetti of so called desert Victory
And this current sticky mire
I'm left to soldier on

But I am not an infantryman
And short, short final
Can last for decades
Like a freefall of free-floating detachment
Still airborne
Still hanging somewhere over East Africa
A mist of useless, irrelevant, dismissed regret

Just a few colored ribbons to my name
I have nothing heroic to tell you about
I was not an infantryman