For a Bitter Veteran Student Who Is 24 Years Old

. . . and my other students

Shipped out, you learned quickly that
the First World wasn’t the only world,
that numbers always become statistics.

Now, you are back among civilians with
their vaudevillian worries. Judgment
isn’t meant for someone who has just

jerked off in a desert far from his gods
who actually came from a similar desert.
You tell me your fantasy was: a gripped car,

skinnydipping, a gun up the moon’s ass.
Write as if your life depends on it; it does.
Write about how you learned to curse

in order not to be cursed, how cursive
bomb drops were your chandeliers, how
you were touched only when mourning

for someone next to you. Right it, fight
the fuck you in your ballsy little boy
looking for his mother in screaming

nights. You will yet play strip poker and
be astonished when no one asks about
the scars. You will not die on my watch.