While I was there, I put a picture
in the front of this today.
Maybe I'll show it to you guys later if you're interested,
but my boss is right here in this picture.
Sometimes I put pictures in here because people talk and stuff
before and I sort of get out of where
I'm supposed to be when I read these poems, you know.
And my boss, he was an infantryman
and I was an infantry soldier, so he really loved his job.
And I'm not talking about killing people and things
like that, I'm saying he wanted to serve his country
and be a warrior.
He had that ethos, being a warrior.
And I was very different from him in a lot of ways.
But at one point, he and I were talking
because he, like a lot of people,
was frustrated with the fact that we were being
mortared by indirect fire.
So someone would attack us and try and kill us,
but we couldn't--
It was frustrating because you couldn't do anything about it.
You couldn't meet that person on the field of battle.
You know what I mean?
And someone who's trained as an infantry
soldier, the mission of the infantry
is to close with and destroy the enemy.
Not to capture them, not to stop them from what they're doing,
but to destroy them.
You know?
But someone's trying to do that to us,
so that frustration mounted.
And I remember at one point our squad was away
and it wasn't Sergeant Turner and Sergeant so-and-so.
It's kind of like Brian and James talking.
I remember him saying, man, sometimes I just
want to put them in the hurt locker.
I was like, man, that's a weird phrase.
Don't you think?
It's pretty bizarre phrase, man.
And it just stuck in my head and then finally this poem
came out I think kind of from that place.
So it's sort of for my boss.
"The Hurt Locker."
Nothing but the hurt left here.
Nothing but bullets and pain and all the
bled out slumping and all the fucks and God damns,
Jesus Christs of the wounded.
Nothing left here but the hurt.
But believe it when you see it.
Believe it when a 12-year-old rolls a grenade into the room,
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.
And it's an ugly business.
And people ask me sometimes what I say to people if they ask me
about joining the military and I say,
when you're signing that contract,
you have to realize the business you're getting in.
You know?
I'm not saying it isn't patriotic.
I put my hand up and I joined the military
and I respect the fact, but it's not just about college money,
you know?