“Take a load off, Fanny!”
Tony’s guitar leading us in the chorus
and all of us baying at the moon
“Take a load for free!”
and Henry’s hash pipe (or Percy’s bong) making
the rounds ‘round Charlie Company’s campfire
bellowing its volleys of Fourth of July sparks
up through the evergreen boughs to the one am stars …
“Take a load off, Fanny…”
we happy hippies, legal draft-dodgers
“and…”
in the perfect disguise: identical
fatigues and field-jackets
“and…”
our non-regulation-length hair
swept
clandestinely under our caps
“and…”
forever hiding out in plain sight in
National Guard armories and summer training
sites in these Maine woods
“You put the load (you
put the load)
right on me!”
Flames glinting wildly in our saucer-wide
pupils off the empty Colt 45 cans and
other dead soldiers cobblestoning
the pine-needled forest floor… and when
the blanks I’d (surreptitiously) unloaded
into
the flames finally opened fire
(seemed a great idea at the time)
zinging sizzling brass shell casings
in popcorn bursts to ricochet off
our hapless “happy campers” amid
hoots and yelps and gales and
gales of laughter—
Life was warm and wonderful because it was
summer and I was skunk-drunk, because the
Acapulco gold really was magical and because
life was really just this M*A*S*H comedy
where everything I said was funny as hell
but mostly because I didn’t have even an
inkling that I was really
just some annoying
pain in the ass
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