Two Poems from Basic Training

Grady McMurtry

(untitled)

Pay days come and pay days go,

But what is there I have to show?

For all the twenty-one I earn

There is no part I can discern

To tell me what my ratings are;

One glass of beer upon the bar,

One try at hot links with the bones

Show no moss grows on rolling stones.

Repay my thoughtful friends who were

So loose with dough, at twenty per,

The PX checks have come and gone

Which leaves me yet more overdrawn

Except for one small bit of change

With which I think to try my range

And sit me to a friendly game

Of cut-throat stud, not quite the same

As never having played at all

For now there is no hope to stall

The truth of that so ancient saying:

are forever paying!”

Sarge

In olden days the sarge was tough,

And little yardbirds had it rough;

For when it was their wont to play,

The Old Man felt it time to bray

And hold them in their lines so straight—

Chin in, chest out—it was their fate

To heel the line and guide it right,

With drill and dress from morn to night.

But now our sarge is lean and lank

And loose and limber in the shank,

His manner mild, his voice so sweet,

Just like a mother nanny’s bleat.

Each morning ere the night is done

He comes and wakes us every one

With gentle tap and whispered word—

The sleepy rookies’ morning bird.

Oh, sarge who was my father’s fright,

That you should be my shining light

In teaching me what I should know;

The rifle sling, the cadence slow,

What time to go to bed at night,

And that I shouldn’t come home tight.

The brood of chicks, the doting hen.

Don’t mind me, Sarge, with us “you’re in!”

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