Photo by manhhai via Flickr Creative Commons
I can explain myself as a soldier,
lessons of blood earned by heart.
I can reach through words
and pull you closer to war,
the one you paid for,
rung by sung a saga
history misses in its rumble through the ruins.
Glimpse the glitter-green tracers at Fire Base Nervous,
small unit tactics with indirect fire near LZ Shithole,
booby traps and body bags up the Song Con,
later, in a footnote, we died there.
Oh! babies in the third degree order of burns.
I don’t remember which day on the short count,
but one clear memory dances me,
dodging bullets behind a grave mound,
Oh! blessed mothers of Agent Orange,
in a cemetery east of Plei-ku.
Oh! little sister of the holy flames of napalm:
they put their children in the ground,
and wail a long time.
