Poetry Feature:
'Only the Dead': Vietnam
Dawn
Those who wake to it . . .
| the united states government / asked me / |
[~ . ]
[his legs] kept running/ leaving the half with /
the brains and heart / dead on the ground
-- Lamont Steptoe ("Before Going"; "Ambush")
~ . ~ . ~
Tom Catterson
Just yesterday in 1969
In the Blink of an Eye
Some are We
The healing of . . .
Richard Levine
War Respondent
The French Railroad at Quang Tri
Rare Species
Mud-Walking
Marc Levy
Civilian Issue (an epistolary prose poem)
Pay and Pray
Morning Glories
Ron Price
The Gift
Blood Ground
Garden of the Wretched
Reckoning the Sickle Moon
Photo: Marc Levy (1970)
Prior publ.: Rattapallax #3
~ . ~ . ~
Thomas Catterson
Just Yesterday in 1969
(a Chinese 7-character ku-shih)
A friend's brother was laid to rest.
A victim of Vietnam...or, maybe politics.
Icy rain peppers momentarily and then stops;
thoughts come and sorrow somehow appears just.
The wind blusters through a large turnout
of family, friends, local priest...one flag;
presented to his mother by stoic soldiers.
I, stumble away quietly...my mind blank.
I feel old, having just tasted vinegar,
and my path shifts to another place.
Atop a distant knoll beside a pond
another steps into the unknown called 'afterlife.'
A low mist that carries dangling spectacles
stops short at the water's edge, nervously;
then I watch history...it ignores me
while just below me an ant scurries.
A slow grieve mocks, wracks me, as
seven wooden soldiers of flesh pay homage.
There are no others present, no tears;
just raindrops that have already passed away.
In the Blink of an Eye
(a Chinese 7-character ku-shih
of another's memory, 1969)
High upon this abandoned hutch's wall, several
blades of grass flourish within a crack.
Moonlit nights fail to nourish waking echoes;
yet the grass waves...seemingly with contentment.
Shrieks and sobs nearby multiply, then shrink,
as a whining beggar stares dumbly, anew.
Then, in the blink of an eye:
flashes of light...mud in my face.
My world is roaring...sight is blurred.
With tears untamed, my pants are stained,
while shrapnel nestles within my back, burning.
Now, there is no pain...below that.
Some are We
(a Chinese 5-character lu-shih)
We are the brothers, sisters,
who are products of war.
We are those that lived,
and came home...to die.
We are the only hood
that kissed the devil, smiling,
while our butt waved goodbye.
We are, the only memory.
The healing of...
(a Chinese 5-character ku-shih)
Today at this small memorial
their presence exhibits history, live.
A gathering of graying men
who sat upon Lucifer's anvil,
branded, by the angels weeping.
Today they've come to remember
they never walked alone, until
that day they came home.
To do otherwise, caused pain...
they've come home to forget.
It shames our hearts when,
we part with our souls;
wondering how much is left
and, will friends be remembered.
For, in this silence, if
you would care to listen...
death, will come to life
and, many will be remembered.
Yes! They want their moment
to recreate life...sans hell.
The toys within their minds
should never, be played with.
So, you'll walk beside us
now, now that you know.
But, can you teach us...
to possibly walk with others?
For once we hid our names,
under the colors of soldiering.
For once, we, thought insane,
revel, for today we remember!
~ . ~
Richard Levine
War Respondent
Should I tell you about the boys
with dusty, glass faces -- path-beaten
by sweat -- how they wake to walk out
of the sky over farms and fields of fire?
How their eyes ceaselessly turret
for eyes hidden amid flaming paddy grids
and phosphorus sky trails? And the heat!
The rain! How fear twitches their brows,
Like wings of caged birds.
Should I tell you how they pour
time into envelopes to give shape
to their numbered days?
Should I tell you about the boys
who are men-at-war within themselves,
in the war within the war?
The French Railroad at Quang Tri
(for Thomas "Pepper" Catterson)
Are they still there:
those railway tracks I
walked along at blood
dusk, after a day tracking
loco-motive men tracking
me; green killers all,
every one of us, hidden
in the endangered landscape,
overgrown with stubborn
shrubs and pagodas, worn
as wounded spirits
and peeling paint?
Are they still there:
those tracks running
together into two disparate
horizons, no trains coming
either way, but rust
riding the abandoned rails?
I wanted to tear them up,
especially at night,
when the moon rode them
out of oblivion, drunk
with their parallel
uselessness, a shining
phantom of unachieved
Huck Finn dreams.
By torrid day I
wished for trains,
the engine trailing
smoke, black and solid
as M-16 barrels,
and cars -- one for home
-- and hundreds more
to carry my grief.
Remember the LP*
by the bend, where on
Christmas Day a bullet
shivered over my right
shoulder, while Draper
was booming a village girl
in the bushes, and before
your smile could shape
the word "close," you turned
into a stone-station on those tracks
that the trains left for good?
[*] LP: listening post
Rare Species
I am a rare species,
a Vietnam veteran who hasn't killed
himself. I found a way to forgive,
to sleep. But before forgiveness,
before sleep, I begged the same
question every night: Why you
and not me? Every night you died.
Every night I reached, but you died.
Just as in life. Through a night
of years, I held helplessness
like a bottle, an intravenous
feed of camouflaged tears.
And I still guard against
that relentless enemy that survived
within so many other question-beggars,
that shooter that fires the suicide shot
that kills ten, twenty, thirty
years later. When I knew I must
forgive this enemy that is me,
or kill him, I brought my name
to the wall, the name you called,
and buried my fingers in the beveling
of each letter of your name, filled with time.
Tracing the loneliness there, I listened
for your voice again. With a tri-
cornered, burial flag I bought, I drove home.
Suddenly, it was simple: I was lucky!
You were not. No other facts are as true.
Do you know how rare a species I am? I am
a Vietnam veteran who hasn't killed himself.
Mud-Walking
The year I thought
as many words for mud
as it ladled out for boots --
slogging through two-by-two
in long ballistic lines -- I prayed.
I prayed when the monsoon surrounded
the moon and tracers shimmered
over the Perfume River, like ghosts
swimming. I prayed when mud-walking
sounded like chest wounds sucking.
Rice tried to be quiet,
clustered in green columns,
like an army in ambush.
Back home the world quaked
where I stepped, unbalanced,
and someone said, "It's over, now."
But for thirty years, the flood
plain of that ghost river has called
me, like a bell buoy through thick fog.
I have navigated its night-shade
tides. I've watched it carry people away,
like kites swelled with wind, high
over the delta, the strings strung out,
far, beyond any way back.
I've even seen -- through the muddy, conical
glow of a Brooklyn streetlight --
rain turn to rice.
~ . ~
Marc Levy
Civilian Issue
(an epistolary prose poem)
Dear Katha,
Your review in The Nation of the Vietnam documentary, Regret to Inform, about widows on both sides of a distant war, immediately caught my eye, stung my heart. Quote: "U.S. soldiers, by and large, did not revolt, throw down their guns, refuse orders that violated the Geneva Conventions. Nor do we honor the ones who did, who fragged their officers or deserted." You're a smart gal behind the keyboard, I like your writing, respect you much, but when it comes to war, you are way out of line. So here's the real deal, Katha, how I tried to kill one Capt. Peter L. Krucinski III, Battalion Surgeon, First Cavalry Division, Vietnam, Class of '70.
On a firebase near An Loc, Moon and me--we're infantry medics, regular grunts you understand--we're getting stoned on good Thai dope and warm beer. But we are not happy campers. Not when you drag in casualties and find the doctor sloppy drunk. Captain Krucinski, pushing thirty, bright-eyed, handsome and slick hair, young, liked his Johnny Walker straight up, his Pabst Blue Ribbon icy cold. It's thirty years, mind you: some things are hard to forget. "Locklear!" I yell to the man inside. "Get out, the bunker's gonna blow." There's a case of frags on top, the bunker is on fire. Concussed and wounded, he can't hear me. A sergeant douses the flames. I reach in and drag Locklear out.
Inside the Aid Station, the casualties twist and turn; the Captain staggers forward. "Hey, how...how ya use a morphine syrette?" he splutters in the awful heat. "You push the plunger down, Sir. Then pull it back. Then squeeze." "Ohhhh..." he says, missing twice before he jabs Locklear good. Up top, I hear moaning; someone being carried down dirt steps. It's Klaber, second platoon. His back is slashed, face gone white, he calls my name, then crumples. The wounded outside, I hear them screaming. Crying, I rush back out.
That evening Moon, slow-sucking a tight, fat joint, nods his head toward the doctor's hooch. "We ought to frag that fuck." "Fuckin' A, man. You know how? I never fragged no one before." Moon says, "You take a baseball grenade, twist rubber bands 'round it nice and tight, push the safety off, pull the pin, put her nice and easy in diesel oil. That shit eats the 'lastic bands: KA-BOOM!"
So we do it, Katha, 'cause we're regular grunts, infantry, only we're medics, too, we hump bandages and morphine, aspirin, antibiotics, fungal creams; we take good care of our men. And I ‘ve got my .45, M-16, three bandoleers of ammo; and four grenades. 'Frags' to you civvies.
Moon pulls the pin; Christ, I am scared. Katha, you ever seen a baseball grenade explode? The killing radius is five yards: It blows up like a cloud on fire.
"Here you go, Moon." I'm holding a Coke can with the top cut off. He drops the frag in, we shove that little Easter bunny under Battalion Surgeon Capt. Peter L. Krucinski III's cot, make sure no one sees us; we walk away. Moon whispers, "Takes about eight hours." I clip the grenade ring to my boonie hat.
But nothing happened, Katha, not a goddamn thing. The diesel did its job just right, but the spoon--the grenade 'handle' to you civvies-- had nowhere to fly. We should have used a soup bowl or big glass jug. The Coke can was too small. I'll bet when Captain Krucinski found our Seasons Greetings he said, "Those assholes. They forgot the goddamn ice cubes."
That was a long time ago, Katha, but I loved my men: I still do. I think about them everyday. And you, smart gal behind the podium or printed word, I like your writing, respect you much, but when it comes to war and why we tried or killed our own, you are way out of line.
Yours sincerely,
Marc 'Doc' Levy
Delta Co. 1/7 Cavalry
First Cavalry Division
Vietnam/Cambodia 1970
Pay and Pray
One fine morning
A chopper touches down.
The Finance Officer pays out MPC.
The chaplain blesses our souls.
We concentrate,
Unfolding stapled money,
Stuffing our wallets
With scrip.
Beneath the triple canopy
He leads us
To sing, then pray, nylon rosaries
Draping our necks and steel helmets,
Weapons and ammo scattered about.
Heavenly Father, forgive us our sins
And those we trespass against
And those who would kill us
And those we will kill
Give us Your blessing
This fine summer day.
[*] MPC: military payment certificates.
Morning Glories
On monsoon nights we'd sleep
Draped in wet green cloth,
Curled and crimped in cold muddy water.
By morning some were mad
From tinea curis, the itching disease.
The medic washed us down
With soap and water.
Others sat on helmets, lit heat tabs
By their feet, wound
The damp ponchos 'round;
Clouds of steam
Rising from their bodies.
~ . ~ . ~
Ron Price
The Gift
Moonlight spilled through the sour leaves
Of the persimmon tree next to my father's house.
I sat alone on the roof, two hours before dawn.
Boys I'd known, a few years older,
Had already come home in body bags,
And now I had to choose --
Canada, maybe Sweden, or jail.
A Resistance advisor said to hold strong
With my brothers who burned their draft cards
And mailed the ashes to the Pentagon.
I wasn't so sure. What remained,
The unspoken felt close to the distance in death.
It hung in the air with the scent of rotten eggs.
Canada, maybe Sweden, or jail.
They were all one choice, all exile.
A car drove by. There was laughter,
And somebody shrieked, Jesus Christ!
Somebody tossed a bottle out the car window,
And something in me broke like glass
Shattering against a curb.
I lay down on the roof flooded with moonlight,
And the moon accepted my faithless tears,
The only gift I had worthy to give.
Offer, I suppose, would be the idiom.
I was learning how people,
Like things, get broken,
Without yet having learned things get built again,
And those who build them again know true joy.
Blood Ground
When we set foot on home ground
blood ground I grew out of
He began to weep
I think he thought we stopped being
someone of this world
His eyes behind sunglasses
cheap blacked-out and of course
The accoutrements of disguise
as if he were strapped to a stern
Raptured in the wailing air and oiled
to sweeten the smell of death
Each night over and again
in the dream that was not a dream
Though he cannot stop waking from it
to it
Mistress and gun the needle thrust
his vein a gulf along the southern coast
Where a ship for the dead stops each day
and sleep without rest without change and no
I think he thought I'd never wake up
Garden of the Wretched
For he knows how much of what he is lived before him
in a dream where he carried the necessary mirror
when he was a liar whose heart double-crossed him without arrows
a lover separated from his beloved miles from the nearest pond
For in the dream where what will be is already known a cuffed sleeve
in the air a kind of human wing the ceremonial nerves glide through
the heart can name what the tongue might never learn to call up
that voice separate and speaking through what we are
Which now he's forgot
For inside him is a nation of people turned away from the soldiers
who killed for them and the soldiers who killed for them
for this is the poverty of a faithless heart
For nothing of this has to do with a beginning the middle an end
it's only air a little song sung by a solitary man walking
through a landscaped garden past a bush shaped like a rooster's head
Reckoning the Sickle Moon
The tarantula crawled out of its skin
that night on the sand,
its body rose out of its body
and left a scar on the old shell.
I don't know if the wound the scar marked
still haunts the tarantula.
I know the voice that called it
calls on, intent or incessant. I know
we are used, wrecked and treasured.
The man I knew is dead,
the bars in the cell of his body
rotted and rebuilt with a crutch he used
to limp toward death
without witness, without witness
beyond the man I became. What do I know
of the silence that swallowed him?
My own ghost haunts me now
no matter what other deaths wait.
~ . ~ . ~