my father & brother in the great war.

i wish him luck each time
before he goes--
i send a telegraph of
thumb prints & necco wafers--
i imagine he recieves it while
sitting on the end of
his bunk-- measuring time
with the unwound pocket watch
of our father--
the one i used to take to 
elementary school
to open the back panel
to reveal where god left the gears of
the universe--
only him & i know everything infinite
is really so so so small--
he opens it & thinks of the grooves
as trenches--
his thick metal helmet tips over his
eyebrows-- thin-wire glasses
perch on the tip of his nose--
my brother was drafted into
the great war again--
it's been so many times
that the family has stopped 
counting-- this time my father 
joined up too out 
of nothing more than stubbornness
& a fatal yearning to find glory
-- he paints
signs for the germans--
seated on an orange paint bucket
in a trench my brother dug for him--
the house has trenches now too--
or so my brother tells me
when he sends me letters--
he's added trenches to the
hallways-- to the kitchen &
all the way down to the basement--
sometimes my mother falls in
& my father & brother pull her
out-- she ignores the
trenches & sets the dinner
table 
as if her boys weren't away 
at war-- i take a sort of 
responsibility for this
perpetual state of warfare--
even if it is the type with
candles in christmas trees
& love letters tied to the legs
of pigeons-- i 
sometimes think if i would
just go back that i could
fill in all the trenches
with a wheel barrow of sand box
sand-- my brother would wake up
in his catholic school uniform
& forget he had ever enlisted--
my father would re-tune the strings
of his guitar--
open the back of the pocket watch
& watch the universe from
his own callous hand--
i received my draft card 
for the great war yesterday--
i burned it over the kitchen sink
& washed the ashes down 
the drain only to look
down & see a trench digging its
way through the middle of
my own kitchen--
we share a contagious sense of
war-- sink into trenches--
open the lid
of the gold pocket watch--
slip safely inside.