recruitment 

a big solider comes with
a money face into the television.
i sometimes wake up in camouflage
& not in the lesbian way.
there is an ad on my youtube 
brain empty machine that asks,
"do you want to have purpose?"
it is followed by a clean missile 
cutting through the dark. this country
is a wound. it always asks for more.
but the thing about a nation
is that it cannot receive. not like
a mouth. not like a hole. instead,
this country works like a boiler room. 
blood in the stomach. the sky goes 
rust thumb red. i touch the ad by accident
& my life is a pen clicked 
in an empty room. on my way home 
from a tree, i saw military vehicles 
stuck in traffic. they were mean & green.
one of them as a tank. there is the way
over there & the war here & the war
between flesh & soldier. i dated 
a girl once who was in the marines.
she told me she never wanted 
to talk about it but once 
she got drunk & told me they took
an x-ray of her lungs. inside were
helicopters. inside were guns, loaded.
that details was important. if the guns
were empty they would have let her stay.
instead she went home. stood on 
the back porch & smoked until
she couldn't feel her throat.
take every uniform i find into the trees.
the trees say, "that is not a god."
i ask, "can you take it back?" 
they explain, "no, that is not a god."
i try to say, "i know it is not"
but they do not believe me. it is probably best
that they do not believe me. 
i hang the camo in the branches.
i expect skeletons when i return. instead,
there is nothing but hair.