There was this drunk at McDonalds today
I had seen him around library mall earlier, talking to a bunch of students by the fountain.
He wore an old military fishing hat, flannel shirt, dirty jeans, and thick yellow tint glasses.
He came up to a bunch of Japanese exchange students and talked about pearl harbor...
"Dec 7th, 1941..." He began.
He talked about the Arizona, the Nimitz,
the Sleeping giant of American pride and prejudice
who would spring up and fight the
facist Japanese Imperial army,
The day the would live in Infamy.
The Japanese students were confused.
I should have said something.
Instead I just stared at the old man, listening to him go on,
and on.
spitting blackened blood stained cries
inspiring an entire nation against a people, a race, an ethnicity.
Midway....
Okinawa....
Hiroshima....
"Revenge against the Japs!"
The two students got up and left, excusing themselves,
I think they finally understood what he was trying to say.
Then he came to me.
"Do you know what I'm talking about?" He asked me.
"Yes"
"Are you Japanese?"
"I'm Hawaiian"
He didn't hear me.
Midway...
Arizona....
Nimitz....
"Got those damn Japs...."
"You know, you look kind of young to have fought in WWII" I interrupted him.
"I'm a Vietnam Vet."
"Why were you bullying those Japanese students? They weren't alive in 1941, neither were you."
"I hate Japs..."
"You've never even been to Hawaii have you?"
"Hawaii??"
Maybe he did hear me....
"The US government owes Hawaii a lot of grattitude and thanks."
He grabbed my hand in an embrace of brotherhood, of countrymen,
of pathetic fucking patriotism.
I can't blame him really, to be sickened, seeing his country
the US of A, great and all mighty, being invaded not by soldiers, or mercenaries,
but droves of Asian students, those that looked like the gooks
he used to waste with his trusty M-16 in the bushes of Vietnam.
Sitting in his America, his McDonald, eating his Hamburgers, his french fries.
He asked the man next to him for a cigarrette, and then he asked me.
I wish I had one to give him.
One more breath of cancer to add to the intolerance blurred
a drink of bitterness
that i hope will someday die with him.
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