Copyright 2009 Constance Lee Menefee

All Rights Reserved 

Choices Not Made

 

We tread delicately

On ancient rims of porcelain cups,

A slow dance of discovery

And futility.

 

Sometimes everything is not

Enough.

Thien An, 1994

 

We wound with the road

on foot

nudging

rusty pine needles and purple flowers

toward the

hilled monastery,

clenched in heat’s teeth

we were pinned

by the stopless skirl

of blue-dappled,

long-horned cicadas

to the memories

of ‘68 Tet

when pits of bodies outside Hue

steamed;

the old Vietnamese priest

crooked a finger --

hissed us aside

in French-spiked English:

“Your driver is VC.”

Ah.

Done and undone

by the whispers of priests.

Chill of Old Memories, Tet 1969

 

An ugly glance

          off to one side

& the pearly shell of

winter sky clouds

behind a tangle of tree twigs

becomes talcum powder pale

quicklime

on the naked backs

of leftover sappers

sagged in concertina wire

at dawn

after the heat

of mortars rockets grenades

and our base camp boys

on automatic

thinking that the boils of satan

had popped

gagging up

black froth and sallow flames

while bunkers,

one after another

concussed into coffins,

the bullets spit little puffs

of red dust in a dervish

of death;

somebody said,

there was advance Intel

but we lay there,

anyway,

wide open like witless virgins

watching

grinning rapists

hands.

The Many Loves of Soldiers  

Talk and talk and smoke,

liquor boasts of war

unmask us

letting slip

blood-stained tears,

quick recovery with

harsh laughs and winks

and more talk

around the deeper silence

around that place and time

we wouldn’t trade

even for one night of unbroken sleep:

we really loved our

fear, that ice pick

slid deep in the throat,

loosing slow

drops of cold bile

congealing until the blush

of taking fire

made us rosy warm

again, at least Charlie

never sent any Dear John

letters;

Saturday afternoons

smoke and Wild Turkey

swaddle war stories --

tongued so many times

they slide out

skin-oil sweaty slick

a long secret string

of worry-beads

until wifey calls

time to go home --

step out, blink fast

in the light

haloing spring fans of soft, 

unfolding green leaves

and blossom petals fluttering

into the street

like some kind of Tet

firecracker pieces shooing

away the lesser demons;

damn, someone’s lit a fire

cheating us

out of here and now

with that lush, woody scent

smoky like the villes

at dusk winking into light, one

hut after another                                                  

how we loved that

time of sooty thrills

obliged only

to walk away intact.

 

Last Letter

 

His name

was

not written on

the picture backs

bruising brownish-red

with age

a young man caught in

joy before he left

and she lost

the letters lost

the name

so that every dead

soldier

could have been him --

safe at home

she mourned them all

equally

because who could tell

the right one

from the others

covered with the flag?

 

Sometimes

she let him live,

the last letter a

sweet token

of those few summer-lit days

salty by the sea,

letting her down easy

because all along he’d

had a lover,

then the dead soldiers

went back to being strangers.

Yellow-Eyed Cat

 

Hear

no evil, speak no

evil --

can’t tell what’s been

spilled

on this floor

in love or haste

or heat, in sickness

or in war

puddles of what makes

us human,

so much juice to mislay

over trifles,

Hail Mary full of grace,

let the bonzes burn

and limp babies flop

in the arms of begging

mothers

do we always see no evil....

the almond-eyed cat

dreams of rice rats

by the threshold

in Hanoi .

 

Lai Khe

 

Ash-drab rank and file trees

thick green crowns

trapping the leaden

stillness,

pell-mell shattered

by an accidental

ambush,

a VC patrol caught in

wide aisles

rakes us and darts

back deep

into the plantation

for safety;

it’s over fast,

but he’s hit,

hit and down,

a man turned into blood

pudding, food for the devil

as the sunlight gauze shroud

drifts carelessly

over his face,

now he’s dead

and the tappers return

to the trees --

their cuts dribbling white,

belying the rubber’s black heart --

all clear,

too late

we smoke and wait

for the dustoff.

Looking for Dien Bien Phu

 

It was hot

          and more

than that, we jinked around

sidewalk partials giant

broken dentures

grimacing,

don’t look too closely

in the maw, under the street

you’ll dream Jonah

in the belly of Saigon ;

torpid tourists inventing

purpose between iced coffees,

we let hours slither off under

the tamarinds and bougainvillea

with just a hiss, an exhalation

a hint of snakes almost encountered,

losing minutes like

shimmery raw silk metered

through a hawker’s hand

we asked everywhere to buy

the round, red pins proclaiming

40th Dien Bien Phu --

our Vietnamese in equal measure

to their English,

they shrugged and offered

flags to mark

the liberation date of Ho Chi Minh City,

twenty minus one

coming upon us soon:

busy year for victory, forty years since

the Viet Minh spooned

our strange bed-fellow

snail-eaters

out of a little green

hell

way north:

bamboozled by rice balls

and bicycles

we brought the lot,

the guns the planes the bullets 

little boats, swift boats

and slow boats to the South China Sea;

all the while,

under Lilliputian tables

by noodle soup stalls

mongrel dogs scratching poxy hides

in blissful, squinting concentration,

and their mongrel mamas and great-grandmamas

too, ceding hot pink flesh

to fleas and mange unceasingly --

they could have told us

just what to expect.

Under the Black Virgin

 

Between the cool ghost trees

silence caught

like a garrote --

plantations

another one of those goddamn places

off limits

on the way to Tay Ninh,

at least a Vietnamese name

you can actually say --

hard scrabble, hard times

always watched

by our own cherry martyr

Nui Ba Den,

a hard-case mama -- the high ground --

and we wanted her in the worst way;

we knew that zone like

a tongue sweeping

’round and ’round teeth

sometimes,

we’d take Route 22 out to the gate

and lob hard rice over the sign:

you are now leaving

the Republic of South Vietnam

don’t let the barbed wire

hit your ass on the way out,

other times,

like new-moon Saturday nights

me and the boys

would hop the fence, maybe 

dragging home later

our guts wriggling out

of both hands;

and that Cao Dai gingerbread temple,

sure was something else 

its Giant Eye Ball

checking in with

Commie Command & Control

under Cu Chi I bet....

well, I might go back some time,

some hard-up holiday

if I thought

I could get up

that mountain

to see

what the hell we were doing.

 Out of the Valley

 

There is no direct flight

into the eyes of this general:

you must rub past all

who stood

when it was necessary

under the massif

after things got worse,

much worse, and

the elephant grass regulars

closed their saw teeth

at X-Ray

and Albany;

you must walk past

each of his precious blooded boys

as he tells you

that they came out of

the valley

with their heads held high,

and all of their dead;

that is what you must

know

before you can know him.

 

Refurbishing Uncle Ho

 

I have tried to imagine

Hanoi --

with lotus lapping

water around the

newly ancient

One Pillar Pagoda re-created

after the French took

their Indochina torch

and lit town on the way out --

wondering, is it like Saigon

only less so? The ancient guild

warren of streets

named paper votive objects,

parasol, hoop net, bamboo, lacquer

rice and worms

haven’t kept up with the times

so

cellular phone, pirated video

or plump white tourist street

more properly would be

in Saigon

which is more properly

Ho Chi Minh City

where they aren’t tied

to the old ways

any longer than they have to be.

 

Uncle Ho

asked for the burn

but fellow travelers

get more mileage

out of his perennial state

lying in Hanoi

making hiatus every so often

to Moscow

where they specialize in fancy death balls.

Ho is in good hands

for re-waxing

and re-wording,

re-created

so even we

can’t remember

why we bombed that saint

in the first place.

 

Balance of Grief

 

Feet soothe wide

dirt paths

queued with

ghost-silver rubber trees

as far and beyond

as

the seeing eye;

feet lilt along

with baskets on poles

just right the

speed to keep body and

load moving

on

rice salt prawns

cilantro eggs greens

up down up down up down

a tuneless bobble

stopping only

when market

is reached

or it all jars

loose --

the grunts carry

grief

in blood-veined baskets

each lost soldier

cradled, a stillborn newborn --

jolting out of tune

lurching

until the end

or it all jars

loose.

 

 

Starlight Fugue

 

Callow green,

flattened, shadow-light,

lovers paired

never as close as sniper and night target

scoped in a pulse beat;

intimate in that breathless,

slow,

trigger squeeze.

Firebase Gangsta

 

The homeboys

jumble

heads over hot shoes

in my mind

with their boomer daddies

and the geckos

fuck-you lizards

doing manic push ups

and swelling

red, scaly neck flaps

out and out and out

staking a testy green claim to

tent flaps and sand bags

in In-do-chi-na

lookat me

lookat me

big and bigger, biggiest

don’t cross me, man

in your face,

I’ll take you out

take you down,

drive by, bye-bye.

 

Their daddies played

the Cong

in the wire,

now

the boys

play each other

on the street...

mouthing and strutting

and puffing and rapping

and cool as skin over ice.

 

Night Patrol

 

In this dragon’s land,

rice has risen

its tiny green swords

from plowshares

since before the ancestors;

I cannot imagine this land at war.

 

Long evening light splays across the treeline,

my traveling companions sigh,

the scent of cook fires

trickles through dusk air —

first one oil lamp glows in a thatched window,

then another —

          how easy it would be

          to slip through the twilight

          into that sweet clutch of fear and anticipation....

          and never come back.

 

“ My  Lai ”

 

I wonder if birds nattered too that day

in the will-o-wisp graceful pines —

when soldiers came

and dropped the babies

one by one by one

with their mothers and the elders.

 

It was mines, they say,

plucking limbs and lives

one by one by one

that drove them in

to gut the village...as if killing

erases death.

 

The soldiers’ mothers, what of them?

Did they think hell roared

as their babies

turned butcher?

 

Please tell the mothers

that butterflies dance above the graves

at Son My.

In Memory’s Lair

 

Even a photograph

palm-sized

with a road curving

between green-graced

hills

and tiny figures in

white-winged ao dai

sears

through my chest,

cauterizing the exit wounds

in my heart.

One and Many

 

Passersby hold up hands

outstretched

next to her larger than life

bronze fingers, burnished

silver by touches;

she looks out — off —

for the slick, again to come and claim

another bloody boy, to whisk him away

where hands

push and pinch and stitch the pieces

back together;

she watches, by wishing

tries to draw the whooshing blades

faster

to the hands

who shove living, flopping limbs

and trailing tubes

on board, onto the

giant throbbing heart --

hoping to beat the body handlers

slip-slapping arms and torsos

onto ponchos, always the race

she tries to win

by staying at attention

even in her sleep,

so they can’t sneak in and

whisk

the caterpillar boys

away to waiting hands

of mothers unable to grasp their

butterfly sons stitched into

stars and stripes:

she’s the one looking toward Lincoln

past the Wall full of no-timers,

stoic to passersby

who washed their hands

of the war in the first place

but now

want to match

outreached fingers against hers.

Politics 

 

I look in their intelligent eyes...

people of decency

weaving children and good works

through the weft of community,

now;

I look and wonder

as Hue was pried back

house by bloody house during Tet of  ’68 —

what did they chant at the barricades

under the enemy flag?

Futility Defined

 

Do you wonder

if transparent fingers

slowly

grow

with green shoots in the paddies?

Rice enlivened by young men’s bones

and juices so long ago lost,

chewed up by fire from the treeline;

a handful of hometown boys

pressed deep into field muck

leaving a fluid wake

that nourished rice

and fed the enemy.

Looking Glass

 

It is hard to imagine,

this mild October evening,

a place farther from

My Lai than my front porch —

but in the last dilute

squeezings of daylight,

the sweet smell of burning logs

startles me...

I am back in the feathery pine twilight

at the graveyard

with village cookfires filling

the dusk.

Hometown Boys

 

Thirty years back:

you left that place

and never made it

all the way home,

still traveling

to the beat of a blood tattoo

and never passing a word

of what it was about:

taped against glint and noise,

at night with the bamboo

squeaking

and fear

vivid as tracer rounds

on point still,

inching toes itching

for the tripwire

just do it be done with it

screaming with hand signals,

and no one gets it

yet.

The My Lai Peace Park

 

To some, it may simply

look like

we’re back with our do-gooding

done-bad

stuff

intentions paving the

road to fixed-up clinics, and

shrimp farms in exchange

for husbands and babies

or papas,

loan funds that

revolve

like the wheel of life

no prayer flags

however just

fluttering contrition

and shame to pluck at freely

growing

like the kapok tree

dispensing its white gauze balls,

sopping soul blood

from the green wound

memorial

curled along the fringed-pine fence

row;

but until we all look

over the fragile

crumbling edges of bloody ditches

into the fleshy truth

of hot, chopped

bodies

we cannot buy our way out;

we must own the horror,

all of us

who turned away our faces

when we heard --

and didn’t even cry.

 

There is no far away

from My Lai.

 

 

Stayed Too Long at the Fair

 

         

          Tick

          Tour

          Tick

          Tour

          Tick

You went over the fence

where the rice was always

greener

and meaner

and those feisty little bastards

scampered off for safety

so often

you weren’t really

there at all

just a bloating,

hulking, spattered

shell of mission;

          tick

          mission

          splat

          mission

another couple guys

bought it

where did they come from

anyway,

they new guys

or fucking old guys

too dead to know

when to go home?

 

 

Yes Means No With a Smile

 

Saigon

near brush

with dusk, the over-wrought

beaten-cooper pearl

full moon gong

floated

over the wedding party,

fire crackers

staccato

good luck demon riddance

perhaps too near

gun fire for my former

soldier companion

blew the vocabulary

lesson

away --

he didn’t want meat

and pointed to vegetables

in my

Vietnamese-English

phrase-book

at the soup stall

where we ate,

in another language

I guess

because they too pointed

and smiled and nodded

then honored him with beef.

 

 

To Forgive

 

You from the hollows and hills,

motor cities, steel cities,

pork barrel cotton king broadloom oil boom

ocean port holy coal towns,

yoked the turncoat dragon

and it came

only at your call

over and over,

licking our moon-cheeked babies with

orange tongues of black fire --

jet-haired girls,

old-enough-to-kill-you boys,

mama-sans and papa-sans

stopped breathing

as the war hoarsely clattered

over and over and out --

just went about their days

waiting

to burn.

 

Still, you from the hollows

and hills, sea to shining sea,

and we

have floated

in the same golden plasma moments

when time stops

and green leaf cheeks

puff up with dusk air,

almost to sigh

with the sun

on its final tilt up

for a last, long cast of light

to net us, twilight fishes

pulled into the deep shadow

for another night

of dreaming

the same cracked tea cup dreams

under left-over French,

white-gaitered shade trees

in Saigon

and out along the canals

with palm-trees flocking

as birds on stilt legs, full-fanned

plume tails and no heads

around elephant-colored tombs

set about with new rice.

 

Survive & Evade

 

Under a milky-blue,

hot April sky

slipped over the bridge

at Cam Lo

I looked for some sign

of the Walking Dead

returning from Con Thien

and saw a only boy with his bicycle

watching fishermen undo their nets.

Offerings

 

The ghosts did not unfurl from headstones

          or blue, orange, white-crested tombs.

Why now, past the paddies

in these baby hills before Da Nang

do they lightly rise to greet me with flowers?

 

A flutter across my heart, in one moment

I leave time,

and see souls of soldiers

standing uneasy at watch.

In one moment, I want to call out,

reach out, show them

winnows rise and fall, melons fat

and satisfied hung from their stick-woven

perches, soft trails so gently cupping

children in,

gathering them home.

 

All those men stolen from promise

left stirring on this ground,

offering restless petals of welcome.

 

I take them

and cannot respond.

Let Bygones Be Bygones?

 

The universal cat

arched, curved,

then stretched — scratching —

folded four paws

precisely,

flicks a look at me,

past me,

in a sweet courtyard

faintly reeking of the empire.

 

A chill on my neck,

tripped by ghost fingertips

who brush invisible along walls

pockmarked by bullet holes...

someone speaks, off to the side,

“Let bygones be bygones,”

and perhaps means it.

 

Cream and yellow-faced egret

treads long, deliberate toes

around fragrant

cream and yellow-faced plumeria

blossoms,

waxy cast-offs from

a courtyard tree.

 

East is my morning window,

gonged and chanted into dawn,

another day along the Perfume River.

M-16

 

Hung behind the door

at the ready, always

wide leather belt

copper buckle

size of your small, sweaty fist

finally

drove you

off to war, seabag,

salt-crusted eyes

and man-meat hands;

and, when choppers thrummed

overhead,

coming for your first best

friend,

you touched the shredded cheek

unbelieving with one shy finger,

he grinned and said,

Hey, it’s OK, I’ll make it...

seeing the boots flop, double-time

on the slick

as it lifts

away

your eyes jam

hope to god

morphine takes the edge off

before his last lung of air

rags empty among strangers.

 

A Very Bad Day In September

 

...red sky in the morning,

sailors take warning,

soldiers, too,

before the day runs out,

first molten then

clotting the moment

forever behind your eyes;

in a climate of havoc

no footprints

left behind

from a day toothed

like elephant grass

blades skirting

gray stone

four-poster graves

half sunk beds of eternal rest

for Buddhist bones.

 

At the Moving Wall

 

You said you came

to the Moving Wall

to see your father

with no gift,

just yourself, and

that wasn’t enough,

just his flesh and blood

having never been held

by his eyes, or his hands

even,

he wanted you named

after his best friend

second-hand, second-guessed;

yet

you carry

him under your skin,

his bones slide with yours,

maybe your laugh is his

laugh, or your teeth,

or your love of the open sky

over granite outcroppings;

you came to him, today,

with no offering,

so

reached up and pulled off

a tulip tree flower --

pale-green banded orange

blossoms full of ripe pollen

promise,

floating like surprising

water lilies in the shallows

of light yearning leaves,

and you stood before his name

and thought yourself --

alone --

not enough

for this dead soldier,

this dead father.

 

 

Metaphysics

 

Vietnam does not exist

except when it rises

like some Brigadoon phoenix

from misty ashes of longing

met head on with unrequited passion.

Even as Vietnam stirs up

sweet and thick

from the bottom

of your bitter black dream cup,

only you exist.

 

In those pauses

quivering

with breeze and light taunting

white ao dai gliding —

you feel

nothing will ever be like this

or as good

as the tiny forbidden flicker

of tender skin

just above the waist.

 

And as you stir

white into black

to pour crackling over ice,

soon you will not exist —

swallowed by Vietnam.

Reunification Express, 1994

 

Somewhere miles out

of Saigon

north even of Phan Rang

and Nha Trang

eating sticky white rice

spooned from red plastic

laundry tubs

you’d swear the riders

of the purple sage

were hiding in a box canyon

a kind of hot tumbleweed

dryness with prickly pears

pretending to be

overlapping green roof tiles,

sheltering some

deeper resemblance to the

cowboy warrior’s home range,

a dun-blue sky as big as the

ceiling

over the Badlands

on a persistent wind afternoon

broken by furrowed trees old

before their time,

stands of slender

silver-mottled rubber trees

slip by

warning even those

lost in train time

bound for the Hai Van Pass

that the time of heroes

is past

is past

is past.

 

Loss

                                                                                         

The sweet wind fills my hair

and turns the trees

to jewels,

plying each leaf 

with a facet of movement

and late spring sunlight.

 

There was wind off the lake

in Da Nang ...

did we each wonder

if wind

would ever be the same again?

Some Who Stayed

 

Misshapen wool steamed

softly

on the stove, pulled-down nylon rope

throat high where we gathered

the one place warm and

I made biscuits that

baked hard as the memories

years later

of talk in the West Virginia winter

crusty, biting layer of

glaze over a foot or more,

late snow, one said he starved himself

ate bananas and water for months

until

they rejected his skinny, draftee butt

-- not enough meat for

cannon

or even typewriter

fodder;

I kneaded and pummeled

a lump of floor and water

until dry dough flaked

all over while I heard

the ways they didn’t go  --

red and gray socks funky damp

around us

so far from triple canopy jungle

hung about with leeches

soft lips ready to slip kisses

too quiet, waiting

for the first red line to

spring up, blood bracelet

discarded carelessly like a diva

might throw a twisting string

of faux rubies

from an unwanted admirer --

so far from the truth

of having stayed, laughing

half-rueful, half-relieved at not

knowing of this,

eating harsh biscuits

free to go on

with unmarked flesh.

 

 

White Flag

 

Baby-blue thin almost

see-through blue ao dai

and long hair, heavy

and black,

wind wouldn't it feel like

across your cheeks

if you could move that

close, tresses sliding

across the silk

backs of two young ladies

claiming our passports and

granting room keys

in a ritual of hostage

exchange well-known at the hotel

with its glass wall into the restaurant

full of green and red-starred

Da Nang cops,

measuring

the fuss and mess

of pink-hot former soldiers

drinking obligatory cups

of tiny tea,

hunched at too low tables

spread-legged around knapsacks

all caught in listening

to the slip-suck of

laundry -- sheets, shirts, rough

towels -- against wet concrete floors

right off the lobby

hunkered splay-toed women never looked

it was the girls

for looking

and those girls, faces smooth

as rubbed church pews

watched and ran for bottled water,

remedies for tender stomachs,

ginger candy

out the door, swinging

sighing hair so different

from the black-shoed

sullen U.S. girls with full lips

painted dark

forming words of arch disgust

over remembered tomato soup

at this Cincinnati restaurant --

it was so sweet,

so, too sweet, spicy

like you know what I mean: barbecue sauce,

sneering around their matching

cigarettes,

exhaling smug words

until I

just had to retreat.

 

 

And So It Goes

 

Vietnam comes knocking

and it’s always

the wrong time

or the wrong door

and

I reel out those emotions

again

for all of them

with the sticky fingerprints

all over their wives

and children,

all over their lives

and whatever pieces

of heart and soul

made it home,

and I feel

grief

for them

and ugly relief for me

that I don’t have to know

what I feel

because they throb so

loudly, I can’t hear

myself cry.

Another One Returns

 

My heart

has a bamboo-lined graveyard

full of all those boys

who sneaked past death

once or twice

but

no one can forever --

and when another one

goes, I seek comfort away

from the sprouting upside-down

tree of acid tears -- throat trunk-filled,

fast diverging branches pushing

stinging grief

deep into my chest,

I walk

among the white confetti

petals flung down by spring rain

in a final homecoming parade --

and see them all, soft-eyed

and smiling,

finally at rest,

back among their ghost warrior

brothers,

seeing for themselves that

crusty, rust-blushed bandages

are indeed shed

and wounds replaced

by purple lilac clusters,

seeing for themselves death’s truth:

the universe welcomes her

children back

entire.

 

Happy Valley

 

It is

on the map

which I have marked

with a purple Post-It Note

because someone always

calls to make sure it

really existed - out there

near Rattle-Snake and Charlie

Ridge -

if they call, I never see

their eyes, but I know

his eyes, behind the dark

glasses

and theirs

all hold a glassy stillness

in which lovely veins

branch and branch into

fractal infinity where

blood and river channels

be all the same -

and around the frozen

ice will be green

so breathtakingly

alive the leaves push

hearts to the

limit against bamboo ribs -

in the gull wind off

Lake Michigan, we met

because he wore the bulldog

on his shoulder

and I always ask;

when we parted, he took

off his bicycle gloves

to shake hands

the wordless truth of skin

against living skin.

Outlaw Mission

 

We are the enemy camp.

 

They advance in columns

of Harleys  —

magnificent bastard screaming eagle

doggie jar-head grunts

biggest baddest meanest

mothers ever rode.

 

Black-mirrored eyes

give nothing away,

as they wait by the Wall

for their men to come home.

 

Day Trip  to Nirvana

 

So hot

my flushed skin

and the white sand beaches

near Hoi An

stewed together

and I diminished to

nothing, three worn shells

in my palm crusted

with sand mimicking sugar,

surf forced jade-green, frothy blue

overhead

South China Sea-sky casserole,

waves tugged, insistent,

at heavy black pants

of wiry young men turning cartwheels,

flinging drops of laughter

off-limits back then

to ones who were so

surely their soldiers at play:

so hot

when our driver took

us

captive, no resistance

even in the dusk too fast along

Highway 1,

we sent a dog back to Buddha

before we arrived at the restaurant

of his family

in the dark by the river

salted with strings of tiny lights --

I ate prawns

wriggled into deliciousness

over charcoal and steam;

a meal of heat and buzz

all day

visiting battlegrounds and paradise

hummed with the beer

until

it was perfection.

Do Not Disturb

 

Some of the soldiers

were lonely innkeepers

whose job during slow times

at night

was to count the

eyes,

matching the number

two to a guest-body

hoping against hope

to have nothing left over,

nothing extra to account for;

between check-ins

imagining

where the bags would

eventually

go

to the funeral parlors

in towns with

three churches,

one general store

and a civil war monument

bigger than

the gas station;

since eyeballs

take a long while

to lose

their glisten,

the evening’s concierge

desperately tried to seal

all the lids

keeping guests

in the dark,

keeping them still

or they’d flutter,

and rustle their

plastic shrouds

insisting they were

in line first

every time a chopper

set down

another load.

 

Homestead , Pennsylvania

 

Ripe

blackberries

in Frick Park , a platoon

spit-shined purple

glistening full

in the Mon Valley

sun;

it was a marine recruiter’s

dream

the valley where

war beats steel

any day of the week --

the steel-men daddies

got up

ready to buy it every day,

their drill instructor, liquid iron

lessons simple,

be always ready

for a hot-metal death

be always ready

to suck your last

sizzling breath;

so

the steel-men sons

lined up,

signed up

figuring Vietnam

would be just another walk

in the park

under old glory.

 

Semper fi. 

 

The Names                         

 

Nicknames slip out

slotted tongues

then nothing but

faint aftertaste

of seeping pennies:

Mooch, Jungle, Zap,

Moon Doggie,

Big, Little,

Hog, Doc,

Southie, Frenchy,                                     

Sonny,

Hawk, Mac

remember

we were all together

in the mud

remember the clots of

mud around rice seedlings

when they ripped

us from the treeline --

the mud throttled

us and glued our eyelids,

stiffened just like cooling

drying blood

on nicknamed skin;

you’re all right here

so close your breath tickles

hackle hairs whenever

a chopper chatters over

and I know I’ve seen you

in the Stop ‘n Shop

buying aspirin and beer;

last week I think your

old pickup peeled past

me, I tried to wave

but my hand was mud

and you sped

out of my life before

I knew it, again.

 

Take a Number

 

Sorry.

 

Triage: must let some

      die

must let some

      live

with puzzle piece

parts missing

jigsaw arms, feet, balls

eyes and hands

oh, damn them all,

half-bodies that

didn’t quit

so we had to

      pick

who to quit

first

but we stayed with them

every one,

we tried to stay with them

every one

but sometimes

the mashed

breathing creatures

clawed at us, insisted

on living

so the dying did their

business alone;

we crave forgiveness

for

letting die

and pardon for

making live.

 

Claymore

 

Snap...crackle...pop...

changed...deranged...estranged...

and they whisper, puckered mouths lipping

he’s not the same since he got back --

sausage-casing

unmemories,

bloodless thin-skin

squeezing neck to toes,

in,

cold and tight;

sucking short little breaths,

in,

just enough to keep

his sorry heartwreck

going

no where

fast

like every night

on LP starting in the kitchen

working out to the

perimeter front hall

slightly dusty lavender

scented and saddlesoap,

snapping deadbolts home

pulling the doorknobs front

and basement

three times and the locks once more --

check --

shoving each window down

too many flat eyes inspecting

pushing the catches twice times two;

sniffing for them --

smelling nothing again

every night, again

like half-baked

half-cocked ambush

souvenirs,

the keening cry and his pointman’s

ground up face,

tripwire, dogmeat:

front toward enemy

mother of god which way is that?

 

Space-Time Continuum

 

Some wives

eventually run out

of room

I guess

the box at the back,

at the bottom of the closet

must have swollen

over the years

been subject to the general

theory of relativity as it applies

to the heaviest of dark matter:

last letters, photos of shirtless grinning

soon to be dead boys posed

against the sand bags

arms looped around each other

and their best friend

the rifle,

ribbons and medals too

if the top sergeant

hadn’t run out

the day they finally

cut you loose;

must be bigger than it looks

bigger than that box

of god-awful Christmas tree

stuff from her dead aunt

that she shoves in your

hands every year:

Here, you always put these up before.

 

Anyway, the box is gone,

she sort of remembers a

cleaning frenzy one violet-peppered

spring morning

when it got in the way

for the last time,

like you feel

more and more,

dog-eared discharge papers

taking up more than

your share of space.

 

Dear Jane, Our Homecoming Sucked

 

Blond forbidden prick tease fruit

the stuff of celluloid wet dreams

got religion

or politics

or laid on the left

and went to Hanoi

where big guns

coughed

and American flyers

went down in twisted blood-smeared

burning pieces;

GI s licked sun-chapped

lips and scrawled free

on the upper right

and wrote

their own forbidden fruit

letters I’m OK chow’s bad it’s hotter than

your backseat sweetness

stay faithful I’ll kill Commies

for Christ

and then

Jane came to straddle those big guns

and the boys took

it as a great big Dear John

’cause when they got home

pretty

hippy-dippy tie-dyed girls

spat out baby killer

and their moms looked

questions like did you

did you, did you ever

kill or cry or bleed or rape

or whatever it is you do at war,

my son?

And their girlfriends nagged

you aren’t the same, not very

nice, really, why can’t you

be here for me?

 

So, dear Jane, we’ll put it all on you

instead of looking

in our teary hearts

and offer the ache

to loved ones

risking betrayal all over again.

Wannabe Mother

 

She could have been

I guess

Jan Scruggs’ mother

with her fading dolly-pink

lipstick,

helmet

of doctored blond curls,

heavy black-framed glasses

bedazzled with rhinestones

but she was so

small;

not that size disqualified

her, but she seemed so

lost

a dry whisper rattling in the

shushing trees

that buffered the Veterans’ Day

crowd snaking past the Wall;

he was her youngest she said

after all the others

and she always got to visit

him on Memorial Day,

of course on Veterans’ Day

and Christmas;

I really wanted the lady

with the heart-shaped

Jesus pin to be Jan’s

mother,

otherwise

she might be the mother

of one of them,

down past the three

patrolling soldiers,

down into the valley

where more

than enough dead

sons to go around

attend

eternity.

 

The Other Soc Trang

 

Please, doc, god,

call me a drunk a lush

a loser drinker no good bum,

but don’t say PTSD,

it can’t be PTSD,

I was at Soc Trang

and nothing much happened

to me, not the real stuff

that makes you swallow

your puke so normal people

can’t see how screwed up you are;

the booby traps,

you remember those

don’t you,

and all the Charlies

every at night

moving around like

they owned the damn

country or something,

weren’t you there

at Soc Trang

the night we were mortared

sure you were there

you screamed with your

mouth closed jammed

under the bunk

as they dropped and dropped

      incoming

      incoming   

      incoming;

what’s the matter

you only remember

daylight and driving supplies

around in the steam bath

delta;

thought you were there same

as me,

must have been

the other Soc Trang

where not much happened.

 

Coin Toss

 

Heads, you were out

of the kill zone —

on R&R in Manila with a taxi girl

while an ambush went south

and your fire team left ' Nam

feet first; 

you won...

your tour ticked by

scrambling powdered eggs

for the short timers

and ticket punchers

in the rear; 

another toss,

you were sandbagged

at battalion headquarters,

with hunt and peck

missions inside the wire;

or, helpless

in a splash of spreading red,

your pointman caught

Betty on the rebound;

and maybe, you were

taking a leak

as the one with your name

whistled a bloody refrain

of mistaken identity

through the other guy.

Tails.

 

Hey, Sister, Nice Tits

 

Hey, GI, you know that memorial

you always call the Nurses’ Statue?

The one where those three

tower

over all of us,

you know that

Vietnam Women’s Memorial

it’s for all of them:

the donut dollie at An Khe

whose party trick one day

was dabbing pieces of bloody

flesh back on guys

from the First Cav

and the other women

who had to smile no

matter what, no matter

how fucked up some poor

soldier was

even if he had

maggots in his thigh wound

or no thigh at all;

it’s for every single one of them

the Spec 5 in Saigon

and Intel gal at Long Binh,

the flying nurses

the ones out at sea,

and the RNs in triage

who came home with

rusty cuticles and weary eyes,

they showed up when

the rest of America

squirmed uneasily,

backed away

from you and your buddies,

it’s the Women’s Memorial

for all the women

who didn’t have to be there

but went and served

and paid their dues;

hey, GI, try:

“Welcome home, sister.

Welcome home, vet.”

 

Shadow Lives

 

There are more

of them

than you can imagine

cast in deep shade

by lost

fathers and brothers, 

sons, uncles and husbands,

sisters, daughters,

friends and neighbors;

small talk shushes

them, strangles them,

squeezes them into shadow

whenever the V-word comes up

because

the order of the day is

dead is dead, leave it alone,

let it go, give it up,

too sad, too deep, too much.

 

Too many.

 

And it is for the children --

we all of us are children --

that the lost leave their Wall

at first light

filing out

in no particular order

taking point

by turns

all day

speaking in tongues

from living mouths

filling voices with names

and dates,

of death,

and, at last light,

black granite warms

as the lifelorn rendezvous,

spirits slipping back

into their perimeter

taking watch by turns

to see that we never surrender

their memory.

My Pain

 

They’ve been hit

through & through

but only the tiniest

blot of dried crust

shows under their hearts

and they show me

pointing to the hole

all out of size to the

hurt

drawing near, I reach

to turn them

where I know to find

the real story

oozing crimson ruptures

a quarter century

unstaunched, I reach to

touch

but fingers grasp only space

between us, they back away

earnest

this is it, all there is,

look here and no further,

no touch....

please, please,

help me;

eyes plead,

eyes of twin kaleidoscopes

chips of iridescent grief, black

guilt oblongs shift past

yellow flecks, shame

slides between

inevitable red slivers,

isolation glitters with every twist,

they draw away -- out of my grasp

turning

their exit wounds blind

me like white phosphorus:

again, I wait for the phone

to ring out

another dead soldier.

Prisoners of the Code

 

Turned to mockingbirds

bound by oath

white band on wings

ropes

garble warble

forced

to co-opt bird anthems

of young pioneers

singsonging

Mao and Uncle Ho

to the hearts and minds

of peasants caught

by short-haired cadre

crooning

the truth as it was

spun by

guards

ever wrapping and unwrapping

in clammy moonlit air:

recant decry confess

imperialist monger of war

puppet trooper your crimes

against the people

who observe no conventions

just rope, and

we’re bound to break

you into song

or shrivel you

into stickmen

fed only by your

code of honor.

 

Blue-Eyed Daddy

 

...don’t bury us

in glory ribbons

teddy bear flags

dog tag beer can

jump boots....

We were just men

boys really on a lark

with no idea

that we would fail

again and again

looking for cease fire,

rolling and bunching

the bed-clothes, trying

to find a spot that didn’t

ache and moan;

don’t bury us

before our time, before

the roses and our sweet

plump-handed daughters

squeezing our fingers

for dear life as they

toddle for the first

time

past sun-sprayed

hedgerows,

laughing with their daddies

loving him

purely;

don’t bury us

in silence and disdain,

we were men

boys really

on a glory lark

that peeled skin off

our hearts,

thinking it hell in the rice,

but learning real hell

at home

as we lived

buried

behind

a thousand yards

of blue eyes.

 

Welcome Home

 

And their moments flake off

in tiny specks

rusty dust glazing

red when wetted with tears

beers

or spit;

screened porches

wooden dark-frames

fan like parasol ribs

skeleton lines

against the western

light, every stuck gnat, fly-wing

beetle foot, making

sungold-leaf bug lace,

as America sits

on her small town porches;

America -- that is her soldier sons

sit in the drawing-down light

with katydids seesawing

honeysuckle sweet air

waiting, maybe, for someone to

pull up and wave

and say,

“Hey, thanks and welcome home.”

Or call, just once, on the Marine Corps birthday

maybe, or the anniversary of Ia Drang

and say, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.”

 

Otherwise it’s merely minutes scaling off

in tiny scab seconds,

and what’s left

is raw dirt waiting for indifferent sod,

Memorial Day blossom look-a-likes

between weather-proof flags;

otherwise it’s one more dead man,

burned up

with that unlovely fever

they call post-traumatic stress,

another dead man whose eyes

were too full of gore

to cry or talk

just gone.

Price Tag

 

They’re out there

every night

doing nightly things

alone or

with babies and daughters

and sons, maybe even

grand-kids

kind of clicking off the

unforgiving hours

since the news

slammed in their lives:

bap, front door opens and the words

roar, we regret.........

too bad, so long, he’s gone,

we’ll see that you get most

of the pieces back and a flag:

Dad

where are you

and why,

why, oh why did you leave

after you said you’d be back?

I learned to tie my shoes like you said

and I’ve been the man of the house

since 1969 

I never helped myself to childhood,

you said to be the man

and I was, even after mom

married that new guy.

 

They’re out there

every night

and most of us are pretty

much tired hearing

about Dad, if only Dad,

so they mimic regular people,

spit the name of his war out

like a bad nut,

blah, Vietnam , blah,

echo -- let’s  move on,

get over it,

it don’t mean nuthin’.

 

Gifts Daddy Brought Home

 

Boot prints

on the verandah

some mess you brought

home from summer camp —

caked cammies,

what the hell is this

red flaked dirt blood,

mama-san wash & dry

forgot these

short timer duds

when you packed

hell bent for leather

back to the World;

wizened, lost

in an old C-rat can

five dried apricot ears

one guy was already

Van Gogh

before we pinned them

in the wire.

 

And it’s freaking

Christopher Columbus