Ode To The 42nd

Ten six twenty-eighteen

I can't keep my mind

From wondering what

Became of those cowards

From seventy-nine through eighty

Where stops stole my pootzfrau

On the base in limestone

Ten minutes from grand falls

Where caribou graze ballfields

Where fur three months the troops

Could celebrate spring, summer, and fall

Then freeze their asses off the other nine

Those chickens that hung themselves

In the showers pissed me off

The nerve they had to make such an awful stench

Forty years and I still can't get over it

Men ain't supposed to do that

They kept moving me to a different room

Till another lily took the leap

They-pissed-me-off

Men ain't supposed to do that

No one should smell like that

No one should look like that

Men ain't supposed to do that

Men ain't supposed to do that

No one should have to smell that

No one should have to look at that

Men ain't supposed to do that

But I can't keep those images or that stench from leaving my mind

What has become of those souls in the showers

Of the cowards that were too cold

Where are they now are they still in the showers

What's become of their souls

Do they haunt the base or what's left of it

Or do they spook the NCOs

What's become of those souls in the showers

Of the cowards that were too cold