Mid-battle of course, things
were different
the General was fighting both the enemy
at hand,
the political maelstrom behind him,
the inexorable humidity
and a bad case of shingles

he rolled down the window of the car
and surveyed the landscape
there was peanut butter in
one of the eyepieces of his binoculars
"Dammit, Dwight Eisenhower gave me those."
he tossed them in the back seat

his aide de camp Clarise
positioned the car on a North South trajectory
she had been a driver for Edward Weston years before
as well as his lover
she understood light
but this was war
and she was prepared to die
in service of the good

The General however had one eye
on his retirement fund
and was not wholly above scheming a
financial incentive for his contribution

thousand of cases of Tecate
had been secured in a warehouse in Roswell New Mexico
under the guise of an alien spaceship or some such dither
the general had also managed to send a DC-4 to Burma
and the generals there had assured him of remuneration
the pilots and navigator were said to be
working the Golden Triangle connection
and were being rewarded in both bhats and heroin
The General had spoken to the navigator the week before
and he had been told they were all hopelessly addicted
Tecate would no longer suffice

"Fuck em' they made their bed
I told them not to go that route."
the General blurted out.
"Sir?"
Clarise thought she had taken the wrong road.
"Let's go back to the hotel Clarise. I need an antihistamine."
To the east the Tecate wars raged on.