Vietnam

A river of red flows oily around sharp rocks
in a far away stream.

fFies buzz around swollen,
stinking, decomposing corpses

Humidity, sweltering heat, rain.
Cracked skin stings, bleeds
and rashes burn.

Death lies waiting like a coiled snake;
beneath the stream, behind a rock
Within a tree, beneath a mound.
In the hands of a friendly face.
Waiting anywhere and from anyone
to strike with deadly force.

A twig snaps in the distance
A bullet swishes through the leaves
Heart clamps shut in a cold vise of fear.
Can't shit, afraid to fart.
The sound of a young soldier crying.

"God, please, let me go home?"
Mixes with the memory
of a young foreign soldiers
shocked and frightened face
Just before I blow him away

I watch through a red haze of spattering blood
as the boy spins off into the shadows
like a marionette whose strings
have suddenly been cut and tossed.

Finally,
after a life time of walking
the narrow dark corridors of a living Hell.
While watching the second hand
of an ancient clock ticking out my remaining life.

A helicopter's whop, whop, whop,
Means something different.

A 50 mile an hour wind blows leafs and dirt
toward... Salvation? Freedom? Home?

I run toward it
Duffel bag over shoulder
Piece in hand
Expecting it to be a dream
expecting a bullet to take me out.
Expecting... the dreaded

"Sorry son, you've been upped."

Not until the final leg of the journey
And the plane is settling into its approach
Do I finally begin to believe its real
And breath an actual sigh of relief.

I disembark with my brothers
Standing tall and proud.
Breathing in the clean smell of home.

To become confused by the lack of welcome
and by the the hippie protesters
Holding flowers and bearing signs

War mongers!.. Baby killers! Peace!
Free speech!


I waltzed with death, to grant them the freedom
To do this?

No glory, no honor,
I come home ashamed to have fought
in an unpopular... confrontation?

We aren't even granted the honor
of calling it a war.

No buddy, it ain't funny,
Nor was it poetic
not then, not now.