What might my life have come to be if I’d have chosen to remain in Ireland, remained aboard the Marizell in 1969, a deckhand with a different future.
First the US murders men in small boats,
not bothering to offer evidence of any crime,
let alone a trial, just summary execution.
Then, committing piracy, my country hijacks
other countries’ merchant ships at sea.
.
And now today, my country’s kidnapped
another country’s sitting head of state.
Congress just a bunch of bleating sheep
and lick-spittle cringing sycophants.
.
Back when I was young, there was at least
a dog-&-pony show, the pretense of legality,
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on
flagrant lies, but nonetheless the government
pretending that my war was constitutional.
.
Tonight I find myself remembering
a little Irish freighter, crew of eight,
out of Liverpool, bound for Dublin,
summer 1969, me an ex-Marine,
an ocean in between the country
that had sent me off to wage a war
against a people who had never
done me any harm, nor ever would.
.
Long starlit nights on the Irish Sea
standing watch with Ernie Kinch,
with Ishmael and Joseph Conrad,
dawn breaking on the Emerald Isle,
the home of leprechauns and rainbows.
.
What might my life have come to be
if I’d have chosen to remain in Ireland,
remained aboard the Marizell in 1969,
a deckhand with a different future
than the one I’ve all too often
had occasion to regret.
