RELATED STORY: Veterans turning to poetry to heal their war wounds

VIDEO: Rosanne Singer shares her experiences teaching poetry workshops at Walter Reed

If a body is what you want,

Then here is bone and gristle and flesh.

Brian Turner kept those words inside a zippered plastic bag in a pocket of his fatigues during his yearlong deployment as an infantry sergeant in Iraq.

They are now part of his poem “Here, Bullet,” from the slim, acclaimed volume of poetry that carries the same title.

Turner’s poetry is among the most notable works written by troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. For many of these warrior poets, their words go beyond personal therapy and serve also as a real-time window onto the battlefields, a record of history as it happens.

And they can help those back home understand what their loved ones are experiencing in the war zone, says the former director of the National Endowment for the Arts, which sponsored a series of writers workshops on military bases around the world to tap into the talents of those who served — and those who struggled to keep the home fires burning.

During a two-year period (2004-2005), the National Endowment for the Arts sponsored 59 workshops on 27 bases in five countries and one aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to “identify the literary potential” of the servicemembers in the combat zone, said former NEA director Dana Gioia.

The authors conducting the workshops were from all corners of the writing world and included Tom Clancy.

More than 6,000 troops and their spouses participated. The project was called “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience,” and has since been turned into a book and a documentary.

Gioia said he was blown away by the talent the project uncovered. Operation Homecoming received more than 1,200 manuscripts for the anthology.

“This is the first time in history, as far as I know, where we’re seeing the experiences of the soldiers being written down and available to the public as they are living them,” Gioia said in a telephone interview. “It’s unique in that they are writing about the war while it is still going on.

“A lot of the writers have gone on to write their own screenplays — like Marine Lt. Col. Michael Strobl’s ‘Taking Chance,’ which became an HBO movie — and books,” he said.

“Brian was the real discovery,” Gioia said of Turner, who is now touring the world on a yearlong “Traveling Poetry Scholarship.”

“He’s an example of the different kind of soldier you see in today’s military compared to past wars. Through their writing you get a real sense of the level of intelligence, experience and education that today’s military is made up of.”

More poems by servicemembers and veterans

Here, Bullet
By Brian Turner

Here, Bullet
If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)
By Brian Turner

Thalia Fields lies under a grey ceiling of clouds,
just under the turbulence, with anesthetics
dripping from an IV into her arm,
and the flight surgeon says The shrapnel
cauterized as it traveled through her
here, breaking this rib as it entered,
burning a hole through the left lung
to finish in her back, and all of this
she doesn’t hear, except perhaps as music—
that faraway music of people’s voices
when they speak gently and with care,
a comfort to her on a stretcher
in a flying hospital en route to Landstuhl,
just under the rain at midnight, and Thalia
drifts in and out of consciousness
as a nurse dabs her lips with a moist towel,
her palm on Thalia’s forehead, her vitals
slipping some, as burned flesh gives way
to the heat of the blood, the tunnels within
opening to fill her, just enough blood
to cough up and drown in; Thalia
sees the shadows of people working
to save her, but she cannot feel their hands,
cannot hear them any longer,
and when she closes her eyes
the most beautiful colors rise in darkness,
tangerine washing into Russian blue,
with the droning engine humming on
in a dragonfly’s wings, island palms
painting the sky an impossible hue
with their thick brushes dripping green…
a way of dealing with the fact
that Thalia Fields is gone, long gone,
about as far from Mississippi
as she can get, ten thousand feet above Iraq
with a blanket draped over her body
and an exhausted surgeon in tears,
his bloodied hands on her chest, his head
sunk down, the nurse guiding him
to a nearby seat and holding him as he cries,
though no one hears it, because nothing can be heard
where pilots fly in blackout, the plane
like a shadow guiding the rain, here
in the droning engines of midnight.

Eulogy
By Brian Turner

It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 a.m.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris river.
Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth.
The sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.
Pfc B. Miller
(1980-March 22, 2003)

NOTE: Brian Turner can be viewed reading his poems at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgHSDRFNKs0&NR=1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LguxNDdyky8.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_rKwRL0p6g&feature=PlayList&p=B755467A3020A858&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=45.



Something Grabbed Him
By Gregory Robert Samuels

And then something happened from within
Something grabbed him
Grabbed him by the throat
He began to choke
He fought in frenzy, fighting for his life
He thought it was over, he thought of his wife
He thought death was knocking on his door
Death was close, as it had been so many times before
It can’t be, he began to scream
‘Wake up’ said his wife, ‘it’s only a dream.’

He Came Back from Iraq
By Gregory Robert Samuels

He came back from Iraq
But his mind was still back
In the land he had fought
Now it was peace that he sought
Or so he thought, his wife said
‘Stop thinking about Iraq, stop watching the news
Stop getting so upset when you drink too much booze
You have seen enough war for one life.’
His wife thought he needed help, his marriage was in strife
He couldn’t understand how this could be
Then I realized the man in this poem was me.



Salut
By Matt Ping

in solemn hope and concentration
the black smears white light in every dimension
through thin windows
in endless detail
waltzing neons strut;
in searching through fading static
while begging the fire down
small drops of chemical equation
calm shaking hands
the honest empathy
for another
blazing within,
the pious, the negligent
forces left to understand
bring fear for fear cleanses,
it bleaches the deepest reaches
i’ll be damned.
spinning blade meet spinning hands
outstretched lives
in a random land
firefight:(see)
fireflies;
timeline;
timeflies:(also)
paid to behave and be brave and be...
pay to be new to be bold and be...
I’d pay to be...
busted, bruised, brainwashed
The best of the worst, of the altogether
unsatisfying, unbelievable, unbearable
worst for the best, of the broken,
and
Nostalgia of the times grasps
into beating chests
fills areas left untouched
enough, is enough, is enough
let us drink
to being alive