ROBERT MCNAMARA IN HELL

by Jon Wesick


Wire-rimmed glasses               brilliantine hair
map on an S-shaped country
Strange whiz kid
taming the yellow-eyed wolf of war
with punch cards and slide rules

Bomb pattern analysis               statistics of enemy dead
game theory     think tanks      Mutual Assured Destruction
Numbers don’t lie
Victory’s just around the corner

But the wolf slipped the chains of cool reason
for a sweaty jungle
Behind yellow eyes the enemy measures
calculates with alien mathematics
jagged steel                         napalm smell
morphine               MEDEVAC               58,000 dead
Numbers don’t lie

In an air conditioned office
tired eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses
checking and rechecking equations
for an algebraic error   a dropped minus sign
Unable to turn away
Not resting until he finds the reason
Still staring at that S-shaped country


Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.
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