Nothing but hurt left here.

Nothing but bullets and pain

and the bled-out slumping

and all the fucks and goddamns

and Jesus Christs of the wounded.

Nothing left here but the hurt.

 

Believe it when you see it.

Believe it when a twelve-year-old

rolls a grenade into the room.

Or when a sniper punches a hole

deep into someone’s skull.

Believe it when four men

step from a taxicab in Mosul

to shower the street in brass

and fire. Open the hurt locker

and see what there is of knives

and teeth. Open the hurt locker and learn

how rough men come hunting for souls.

it could be for a wedding, or it could be for you.

 

Always enter a home with your right foot;

the left is for cemeteries and unclean places.

 

O-guf! Tera armeek is rarely useful.

It means Stop! Or I’ll shoot.

Sabah el khair is effective.

It means Good morning.

 

Inshallah means Allah be willing.

Listen well when it is spoken.

 

You will hear the RPG coming for you.

Not so the roadside bomb.

 

There are bombs under the overpasses,

in trashpiles, in bricks, in cars.

 

There are shopping carts with clothes soaked

in foogas, a sticky gel of homemade napalm.

 

Parachute bombs and artillery shells

sewn into the carcasses of dead farm animals.

 

Graffiti sprayed onto the overpasses:

 

Men wearing vests rigged with explosives

walk up, raise their arms and say Inshallah.

 

There are men who earn eighty dollars

to attack you, five thousand to kill.

 

Small children who will play with you,

old men with their talk, women who offer chai—

 

and any one of them

may dance over your body tomorrow.

The curve of her hip where I’d lay my head,

that’s what I’m thinking of now, her fingers

gone slow through my hair on a blue day

ten thousand miles off in the future somewhere,

where the beer is so cold it sweats in your hand,

cool as her kissing you with crushed ice,

her tongue wet with blackberry and melon.

 

That’s what I’m thinking of now.

Because I’m all out of adrenaline,

all out of smoking incendiaries.

 

Somewhere deep in the landscape of the brain,

under the skull’s blue curving dome—

that’s where I am now, swaying

in a hammock by the water’s edge

as soldiers laugh and play volleyball

just down the beach, while others tan

and talk with the nurses who bring pills

to help them sleep. And if this is crazy,

then let this be my sanatorium,

let the doctors walk among us here

marking their charts as they will.

 

I have a lover with hair that falls

like autumn leaves on my skin.

Water that rolls in smooth and cool

as anesthesia. Birds that carry

all my bullets into the barrel of the sun.

to shower the street in brass and fire" appeals towards the numbness of these events.  An everyday object like a taxicab can lead to the uncountable deaths that it may result in. The association of everyday objects provides more emphasis on the "everyday" aspect of these events. Everything mentioned in the poem points toward death, but almost treats it as if it is common.

cool as her kissing you with crushed ice..." provides the inexplicably scene of happiness that the solider desires but ultimately is torn back to reality as he acknowledges that what he longs for is by prefacing, "in the future somewhere." Returning back to reality, Turner snaps to his current situation, "all out of adrenaline, all out of smoking incendiaries."  The solider uses these images of paradise to cope with the violent situation he's in.