Drew Cameron

You Are Not My Enemy

Living Without Nikki

It doesn't seem so foreign at the time, at least not until she's gone. Part of my uniform in Iraq, an essential component was my M16A2 gas-powered magazine fed rifle with an M203 grenade launcher. Two hundred and ten NATO certified humane 5.56mm rounds. That is seven magazines, the basic combat load. They realized that a bullet is more effective if it maims rather than kills. That the target, another human, is better neutralized if the metal stays in their body. This way, other combatants will have to tend to the wounded, a more expensive and energy demanding situation then throwing a body in a hole. Nikki was her name. They encouraged us to develop a relationship with our rifles. Our companions, an extension of our bodies that defines our effectiveness as a soldier, a methodically trained killer is our rifle. She was always with me, always within reach. In my hands at the ready when I was on missions, one in the chamber, ready to switch from safe to semi-automatic. A few pounds of pressure on the trigger to let her speak. On my back, strapped and unloaded when walking around camp, but I always had a magazine in my pocket. Under my cot at night, nobody would touch her without my noticing. Sleeping with the strap wrapped around my arm I would nestle her against my side for extra comfort some nights. I was meticulous and thorough when I cleaned her every day. Making sure to remove all of the sand and carbon from every corner, crack, chamber and crevice. She became a part of me, a mutual relation, as I was a part of her. One of the first things I did when I returned home was give her up. They took away Nikki and locked her away. You feel lighter walking around without your rifle. Sometimes a sudden panic strikes when you think that you've left her unattended. "Oh, wait..." we only see each other occasionally anymore, and I sleep alone. I don't like guns anymore, but I still miss Nikki.

Toxic Munitions Report

Close your eyes for a moment, allow me to paint a picture:

A tall sun on a hot summer day, you are traveling down that highway again
as so many times before.
It's a large truck and you stand, not sit, out the roof of the vehicle the upper portion of your body is exposed to the hot air rushing through your clothing.
Drying the sweat permeating from your pores
The heat and light on your face blows like the waves of energy from an open oven door
and a glaring look too close.
But its not food baking that you smell.
There is the combusted burnt fumes of diesel wafting into your nostrils.
And the deep grumbling sound of engines in line bouncing down the road.

You can see the landscape reel by, irrigation farms and scattered trees, brush and grass a light tan earth exposed, far more than it is covered. Dry bleached earth.
You are rigidly bouncing up and down on a tight suspension hauling a heavy load.
it's a good thing too you think, the last of thirty loads and three days this week already,
moving your cargo to its final destination.

Depleted Uranium, our creeping skeleton in the closet, opening the door.

I know where you have gone, you found a way, to live on. We thought we had dismissed you of your place. But silly were we to think that story was over.
I wonder if they know, when one day when skin breaks out in indescribable itch and burn, when the thyroid seizes, the liver fail and the kidneys bleed, that it came from below?
I wonder if the very soils that we grow a harvest from, and the water we drink, bathe and spread on green fields is the very channel for this state of health? They must wonder.
Or the child born with rare disease, given less of a chance because I looked into a pit once.
The children who must still play on the hills and mounds, jumping, tumbling and rolling as kids do, might not know that whether you are in Hawaii, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Cape Cod, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Alaska or Iraq that these are toxic hills, and it happens all of the time.
Yes the story is far from over, as the dioxins, PCB's, heavy metals, carcinogenic and mutagenic toxins work their way into the soil, the water, the air, plants, animals and people carry on what the earth gives to us, what we give to the earth.

Onward:
The earth is big, the soil is deep, the water is abundant but we have fast, impatient and furious feet.
The story is now, the story is next year
How we walk today, will determine if we can tomorrow

precaution, contamination, irrefutable munition abomination,
hungry comes the aforementioned
people will eat the seasons planting
given time the earth is replenishing

thankful are we for given chances
rivers, lies and see through damages

drink deep and never be thirsty, plant soft and never be hungry, walk lightly and always be reverent, seek truth and sincerely be awakened.

Cadence

You Are Not My Enemy