By Brian Ellis
The second to last time I saw Sully I picked him up off the street
he jumped in my car, excited,
Brian! Guess what? I smoked crack last night!
Now I done every drug known to man.
The first time I met Sully he was selling to me and my friends, he was on parole
and too worried to carry a gun So I carry this
and in one fluid motion he swept a hatchet from his pants and lodged
it in our tabl.
during that car ride Sully told me he had enlisted
this was in two thousand two
said he was bound to end up killing anyway
The last time I saw Sully was on a shaky clip he emailed
in the video, he another soldier
are standing in the doorway of a ramshackle
classroom, lazy gunfire outside
regarding the bullets like angry insects
Sully keep sticking his face sideways in the frame
shouting What’s up, Dad!
the other soldier is shaking his automatic weapon
like a pen running out of ink
it’s my birthday, man, he grunts
all I want for my birthday is to pop one head
One head for my birthday!
the video zooms in on the guns’ viewfinder
we watch the wish come true
And I suppose its useful
to send our killers to the other side of the earth
and put them to work like this
Easier anyway,
than fixing what we broke in them in the first place