Scenic Route for D.A.
We are talking about the past now,
the history of pain using full sentences—
as if we could reach through language
across time to those jungle nights
at the temple of bones
banging away at the dark
idea of tossing words through the air
like grenades into the thicket of memory
the past tense clear as the blast
in the blood light of dawn
clotted in long shadows
amid whitened trees and bomb
craters and sandbag positions
soldier boys dying over and over
in the flash of rocket explosions
caught in that gleam
they glitter to death—
locked and loaded in our hearts
we make it out of our lives.
Dead Reckoning Got Us This Far
I am going through my life again
spoken broken scribbled remember
So I begin as memory
Once upon an Ozarks childhood
Cheerios, pop beads and hula hoops
many sewn and patched things
twisted into facts
my story its own Frankenstein
meaning in its meat
like words were scars shadows keep
cut in clay round the heart
Ratchet memory up to ricochet
Ambush fire fight rocket barrage
I do not know which day on the long count
Night that crawls though it’s ticking
A year wrapped in minutes around the soul
Drag out the whole damn thing
every gruesome inch
and dance around it
Reality Television, 1966
I thought I knew the way
through words to tell
again the soldier's take,
how language harbors
expectations—and,
not just the wasteful carnage
of youthful courage cut down
for a culture that needs
their blood to purpose
what little meaning
they might make of this mess
that marks them sacrificed:
we went sent like
you would flush the toilet,
to the war no one wanted any more,
so they gave it to their children,
let them play with death
and watched them die at supper time.
Say All the Words
I could make the shadow dog easy
a fish bird and a passable clown
but not hold it long enough for a laugh;
then all the lights went—
and still I worked the war by hand,
maybe it was a wolf.
Maldonado and Hobson were always with me
the whole time, Big M as RTO and Hobson
was Mad Dog when we needed one.
It went it streaks
for a week, maybe ten days
a B-40 rocket breakfast call
then a few days of small arms surprises
scattered through then
quiet long enough for nervous as hell.
And I went home.
At first I wouldn’t believe my photos
from the war. They all seemed to float
in something I had lost or tossed deliberate
like a grenade into thick brush.
Nothing else rhymed for me, so I put them
down a long time, maybe ten years and
just wrote all those Binh Dinh trails
to nowhere by heart, up and down the hills,
waded rivers, slept monsoon, 50 days
outdoors and all of the above—
words silhouette what we cannot see.
Long Playing
Over, asleep in its scars
The past is anything it can be
A meal for ghosts
The fluff of stuff we store
In dusty attic boxes
And remember to forget
Everything we could be
Some place to come from
In the messy order of blood
Some time making up the story
In the body count of days
History as an Ozarks playground
Mother puts a nickel in and it’s all back and
Forth in a purple space coupe at Woolworth’s
Or up and down on a pink cowboy pony at the grocery
Memory gripped in a story we did not write
Spinning tie dyed lava lamps doo wop duck and cover
Cheerios, pop beads, hula hoops
We gather to the heard and cheer
The high school football team at homecoming
In the patchwork half light of language
The shark fins of history in a glass bowl of matchbooks
Grainy grinning in the snapshots
Live fire low crawl monkey tricks in the jungle
That stretch of county gravel going home
Some far off at the country heart of the country
A place worn smooth.
That holds us warm like a whisper.
Terms of Service, 1968
Caught in the emblems,
we were words walking trail
in a story we didn’t write;
a trial and a trying to find
a blood oath and be quoted,
(elegy or litany to their lies)
so as to bear witness to being
U S soldiers in the last half
of the Twentieth Century.
Gestures in cliché,
what became of those boys
who lined up to die
for nothing but a lizard paradise
of chemicals that will kill them?
Counting days by day and touching time,
somewhere deeper in the green
than you have ever seen before
the fault lines of memory,
the jungle turns into a secret
like how pushes next into never-ending war,
every day a parade appears lost in language.
So How Could They Call It a Tour?
You’re up and then you’re dead
And nothing comes true
You’re sad like Frankenstein
Then the politics of patriotism
You’re dead in Viet Nam
Lots of time passes
In a few words
I try to make the syllables dance
And they would see your song.
Black & White, Red All Over
Each night twists its own sunrise
Let us see the dawn as burning
Dark away and its dream of woes
Into scenes of shadow play
Easy steps across sunrise
Into a slide show of terms
We have heard before retail
We make our way to work
Let morning fill us with busy again
As if we knew how thin we are here
Splayed in the light
We spend the time in words
As if that keeping held a meal
For the hungry or
A hope for peace
A place without history
As if we knew we knew
What we searched for
And what we might do
If we found it
Any Meal is a Happy Meal
Let us see the evening as raw meat
The finest Grade A America Prime
Spitted ready for the burning
Charred and bloody rare insides
Leaking on the platter white
As we find our way into this scene
A table offered up with places
And take our portions of the gore
With salt and wines amid candles flicker
Over faces of the hungry
Let us eat these products
From the heart range of this continent
The cowboy bounty of hard work
Slice and savor the marbled meats
And rub our full bellies round
And sense ourselves deserving
These cuts and servings
As if it were a duty to an economy
That can no longer afford our appetites
Truth Arrives in Disorder
It doesn’t have to be completely dark to sleep
Whatever happens merges
Monkey work fossil time
There is only one street, one light
You know where you are from the start
All day uphill jungle trail
Dirt road to nowhere
Tangled in the stars pushing the rock
We fluster about them like words
At the end of a long sentence phrased
In gestures of bravery, independent and
Participial phrases, appositives
Narratives that grouped second platoon
On a scale of “What it is?”
A scheme or a scream
A deal on a dream
The blue black blank at the end
The sound the soul makes
Untying the world.
What Love Makes of Us
Let us see night as a place worn smooth
Inky shadows on the page
Only one street, only one light
What comes of yesterday
And we can see the song
Death camouflaged red
You think there is no upside down
You think there is more so
You want some tangled in stars
A face becomes a flag
An inch of history in the highlands
Flapping faded over a row of graves
We knot ourselves real
Or later the same day dark
The heart when its meat
We look longest at pure red
Clotted in the facts read skulls
The heart when its meat
We build our dreams in sweat
Knitting
Because we have no home in language
we place our hearts there,
and never stop scribbling;
memory anchored in letters
the scene as said, as sad
as spoken broekn
the space meaning occurs
one word at a time
a place worn smooth.
We flash as long as we can.
FullTime Real World Application of All Content
Deconstruction or
Full Time Real World Application for all Content
We chopped all day
through thick brush about a blue
made a lot of noise
sliced a 100 yards of new jungle trail.
I grappled with my equipment
rucksack, aid bag, ammo
trees in the shape of words
stand in dense undergrowth
a face becomes a flag
shadows define space
it tries to be a long time ago
but that doesn’t work
then no next never
or scribbled remember
there is no punctuation
night drags dark through the heart
words howl blood in every poem.
Difficult to find yourself at war
great chunks get moved around
over smaller pieces
death comes in a blast
flash flesh flush
that tears you apart
shock waves spread the parts
meaning in its meat.