The Front Lines of the War

and other poems

Shan State Suite

i. Hsipaw

Arrive Hsipaw after 12-hour bus from Mandalay,
army trucks carry soldiers and guns through the night,
a teenage mother drives a motorbike
through the diesel haze,
one hand on the throttle
one hand holding a baby to her breast
as eighty miles away
a rebel army digs into the hills
waiting for a government attack
waiting for the generals to cough
soil their underwear
fall down drunken in a brothel
with flies buzzing above unmade beds—

meanwhile, international observers pass a hat
collecting accolades
for a peace process in which
bank presidents and foreign ministers
are politely asked
to pull their cocks out of the earth, refrain
from filling villages
with seeds of their ambition
which sprout into nothing but hunger
for the sake of some accountant’s bottom line.

Strip-mine consciousness,
lay open landscapes
like parting a pair of thighs
guided by market imperatives
and cash agendas,
twist a tourniquet between your legs,
still the hammers fall to earth
bang bang bang
to build another façade
another bloom of concupiscence
a looped dream we can’t awake from.


In the morning,
streets are gray with mist,
a wrack of twigs and leaves
along the river bank above the quay,
vestige of high water
months ago
in the rainy season.

A soldier in dirty fatigues
sits in a tea shop,
his AK
loose and easy between his legs,
he looks around with a lazy grin, and why not,
roads and towns belong to the regime.

The serving girl tightens her sarong
and brings a lighter
for my cheap cigar,
thanaka daubed across her cheeks,
totemic fingerpaint design,
pale yellow against her earth-brown skin.
I sip my tea from the saucer where it’s spilled
and try not to meet the soldier’s eye,

Pay two dimes
for my tea and cigar, then
walk back along the river
where the water continues to fall,
pack my bag in my guesthouse room
and wait for the call
to tell me where to go
to meet my contact for a ride
to join the rebel army in the hills.


















ii. Moitessier

Take the beauty of antennae towers and gravel crushers,
compress it into a pharmaceutical formula,
panacea for a life of boring equilibrium,
mix tongues and mythologies with bitumen
to roll out a roadbed
so we can lumber forward
like prehistoric beasts
towards inevitable extinction,
everything sticks and stalls
wheels ideas ideals
borders drawn with algorithms of authority
steadied by whisky and soda
to anesthetize animal grief
the pain of subjugation.


Moitessier sailed around the world
navigating by the stars
and the slant of swells
across the surface of the sea,
forsaking land
even to fill his pockets,
slingshotting rolls of film
to passing freighters,
trusting some brotherhood of sailors
to send them to offices in London.
Me too!
I never rounded the southern capes,
I have no sextant, no knowledge of the stars
just a bestial faith in waves,
magma and breath
empires and extinctions
pass through me,
continental plates
drift shore to shore
beneath my ribs and clavicle,
beneath the crust of earth,
as they rise
as they subside.
















iii. Lashio

I am probably drunk without feeling it.
My contact calls five times from five numbers,
tells me to wait at a crossroad for a white car.
Well, half the cars on the road are white.
I buy a shot-bottle of whisky
at a sundry shop,
then another,
drink them without tasting anything and
suddenly feel I can never go home,
so buy a pack of cigarettes,
home a distant abstraction
I never arrive at anyway.

Instead of a white car
a moon-faced man gestures from a motorbike,
I get on behind and
we drive down a strip of beer wholesalers
to an auto detail shop
where a crew is prepping an SUV
which looks to me
like an easy target for the regime,
gleam of money moving through
this landscape of farmers
plowing fields with buffalo.
They bring a tray of meat
to snack on while we wait,
and I’m glad I gave up vegetarianism,
I’m glad I restarted smoking,
lighting butts up end to end—

the moon-faced man motions to me
and we are on the road in seconds,
he hands me a cap to cover my head,
a vain gesture of disguise
since I hulk like a yeti in the shotgun seat,
he buys a satellite phone
with stacks of cash in a plastic bag
then we accelerate past
a series of billboard ads
for banks and farm machines
on the way out of town.

We drive an hour
then turn onto a track of rutted mud,
hump forward five miles an hour
east through the corrugated earth,
karst hills hunch up from the plateau,
villagers pour bitumen
over a crushed rock roadbed,
corvée labour paving the way
for army trucks and guns.
At a government checkpoint,
a pickup rounds a corner
two soldiers in back with legs spread wide
behind a mounted gun,
we shoot
forward and skitter by
two wheels off the road
don’t look back
and no bullets come smashing in
to catch us from behind.

The driver motions me in back
and covers me with a tarp—
he slows to a stop and I hear
interrogation voices in Burmese.
We drive half an hour more
he pulls over and uncovers me—
I emerge to rice and corn fields
golden in the sun,
haystacks twenty feet high
and limestone karsts in all directions
like breaching whales
rising from the plain.

Palaung women
with solid silver belts
walk down the road,
Shan soldiers
in baggy uniforms
stand by dugout bunkers,
automatic weapons
resting on their hips—
my driver breaks into laughter
buys me a foamy beer
from a roadside shop and
shakes my hand, repeating
our half-dozen words of shared language,
an incantation of gratitude
to the gods of the road
that we were not detained,
not shot and left for dead,
as if the world
had been given to us as a gift forever
as if we could never die
as if we could never be
anyplace but home.
















iv. Scenes from the front

Drinking Myanmar beer
in the conflict zone
where the Myanmar army is the enemy,
a pickup passes by
Shan soldiers in back
driving to the front
assault rifles raised like scepters
kings of the moment for sure
when any moment
breakfast could spill
from their guts through broken skin,
no helmets or flak jackets,
everybody squinting at the sky
for signs of fighter jets.

❖

Hilltop outpost,
looking down upon a valley,
rice fields quilt the earth
between the army lines,
.50 cal. machine gun
pointed at the sky
waiting for God to appear
in the form of a helicopter gunship and
fill everyone’s belly with stars—

a soldier sits on a crate of ammo,
grenade launcher between his knees,
stroking the comb
of a rooster,
its wing metallic orange and green,
eyes half-closed
his lips touch its beak
fingers circle its neck
like he wants to take it with him
when he falls
through the muck and trash
of the perimeter trench
to a vault of eternity—

but he opens his hand,
sets the rooster on the ground
walks down a slope
and takes a spit of meat
from a burned-out fire,
pulls a piece off with his teeth,
and sits down
on the ammo crate
to chew.

❖

Riding shotgun
in a pickup to the front,
a dozen soldiers in back
bristle with automatic weapons,
a naked pregnant woman
walks down the road,
matted hair, black peeling skin, cackling
to some god or ghost
the rest of us can’t see.
Her insanity makes perfect sense to me
in this sanitized genocide
where villages are bombed,
monasteries strafed,
the government mounts systemic rape campaigns,
and Chambers of Commerce
lobby to have sanctions lifted,
to open markets
as if a greater volume of extraction, trade, consumption
is all we need to put the world right—

an old woman with silver hair
in a blue Shan tunic
sweeps a farmhouse yard
as troops march by in clouds of dust
and a livestock truck groans by,
three oxen in back,
a Batman sign cut in the hood as an engine vent—
driving between the army lines,
moving animals
from the war
that comes like fog
devours everything
then moves on
leaving bones and teeth.

❖

Sitting with an officer, half a dozen
grenades strapped to his chest,
speaking pidgin Mandarin
drinking whisky
eating roast pork
in the shadow of a gold pagoda
beneath a banyan tree,
government troops 200 yards away,
two kittens, one tabby, one black,
play in the grass by my feet,
as we wait for airstrikes that haven’t come,
a quiet day in the war—
he offers me a tin of Danish sugar cookies,
fills my cup and says,
“It’s too late to fight today,
have another drink!”

Farmers take their oxen out to graze
on short stiff stalks of
harvested rice fields,
bells around their necks
toll in the autumn air
between two lines of hills
between the front lines of the war.














v. The front lines of the war

I was on the front lines of the war
I saw soldiers eating dirt and grass
I saw the women they left behind
and children with flies in their mouths

Livestock wandered through the battle zone
Metal made nests in trees
Mortars and machine guns were pointed at the sky
Soldiers made love after dark
Kitchen boys ate scraps
and waited naked for their uniforms to dry

I heard the arms manufacturers laugh
over paté and wine
I saw them clean blood from their teeth with matchsticks
I saw hair and clothes on fire
while governments sat at 5-star tables to negotiate

I felt wind and water flow across my body
My skin was an embrace of unknown forces
warm and liquid moving through me

The generals comb their moustaches
on the way to the press conference
and spit into handkerchiefs
Their teeth fall out
Their lips and tongues fall off
Their faces fall off
Till only a neck remains
Handlers rush to mold another head
with a doleful expression
to stick on the bloody stump


The general coughs into the microphone and says,
We are following the will of the people
As his mistress gives birth to an angel with bat wings
And his wife buys a thousand dollar purse on Champs-Élysées


I saw grass turn gray like hair
I saw monkeys snug neckties and drive to work
to pick fleas from each other’s fur
I heard rain on a metal roof
and animals howling in the slaughterhouse
I heard earthworms chuckle in time
with a symphony of machine gun fire

I saw that to presidents and generals
the earth is a piñata
Beat it like a prisoner till sweet treasures spill
first one to break it open wins


I figured I should try to win the race
I discussed mortgage rates with a loan officer
and calculated percentages
I moved decades like checker pieces square to square
I tracked financial security through the scope of a sniper rifle
and on the radar of a fighter jet
I wanted others to surrender
to quit fighting for what was mine
I forgot that armies killed for what I have
and whole continents died
for the idea of ownership
I bought a lawnmower on the installment plan
it came with a lifetime guarantee
that nothing would ever change


I held an M-16 in my hand
it was light as a plastic toy
I visited temples with shrapnel scars across the walls
I sat on a hilltop watching for gunships to appear
waiting for rockets to bloom across the sky

I met refugees who fled with nothing
but memories of rape and murder
their houses burned by soldiers
animals cooked and eaten
daughters go missing and don’t return

During a lull in battle
I walked across a field
between government and insurgent lines
Villagers were harvesting rice
carrying sheaves of grain on shoulder yokes
sweating in thick hot sun
the guns were silent on both sides

At the dinner table an officer inspected a rifle
and shot a hole in the ceiling
I thought of Frank Stanford and his shotgun
and the three bullets
he fired into his own heart

I heard news reports about a cult of personality—
The new leader could only talk of leadership
and the need for others to follow
but no one had anywhere else to go
or a voice to raise above the sound of marching boots

I heard water flowing in a stream
I remembered everyone I love
I remembered my father
how could I forget since he now fills my body
I traveled to the conflict zone
and now it travels in me
brother to the worms
eating their way through earth

Nothing is distant
in miles or history
Feedback loops of
taxes and invasion
dance in time
with imperatives of perpetual war


You don’t have to pull a trigger
or open the bomb bay doors

refugees and bureaucrats
presidents and secretaries
bank tellers and factory hands
plumbers and golf pros
rice farmers and fashion models

everyone is on the front lines of the war.















vi. Gridded autocracy

no place
to set a foot
beyond its border of control
everyone like a fish
with a hook in its gills
sharp barb in every breath—

this life is
seawater pouring through you
a quick breach
of the surface
breaking into light and air
then falling back again—

cut the metal
bite through the line,
turn one eye to the sky
one eye to
the dark heart of the sea
floating and sinking
in a bath of salt and sun.











Shan State, Myanmar
December 2015