Thomas
served in II Corps, Qui Nhon 67-68. He was one of the many readers that
stopped by our tent and read with us on one of his visits to the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial in Washington DC. Tom lived in Tuson, AZ and made the transition to upsate New York and is quite active in local Veteran activities.
fact:
i was born
in a certain place
within a particular country
but that
happenstance alone
is not enough - - no it doesn?t suffice
to induce in me peacocked pride
stirring loyalty or blind patriotism
indeed
somewhat thankful
am i for it
now i serve it
in a war-torn land
distant and strange and unnecessary
where i just might die for it
or so the newspapers shall say
gallantly waxing trite rhetoric and hollow pomp
i'll just be dead - - small comfort for my next-of-kin
soon i may return to it
and maybe be happy in it
for awhile
but that won"t make me stay
i very well may
leave it
not quite ready yet
to fully accept
to be definitively sure
that some other place
other than it
far-off or near
isn't greater better
or more relevant
Somewhere in Vietnam
Sometime in 1967-68
it's mostly the
eyes
that get to you
here in this
war-lulled place
those glazed
by pain
or death
overmuch
others tinted
with just a trace of tears
the eyes filled too much
with far away memories
eyes not hoping enough
that stare at nothing
especially at walls
but the eyes
that bug you
the most
are the moon-filled eyes
of the children
full-bellied
with malnutrition
which barely
are touched by
slightly gleaming of
the tiniest spark
of an always
smile
Summer, 1967
Qui Nhon, Vietnam
Deep grief rages
unresolved within me
Unquenchable
tears squeezed dry
unreleasingly flow
No bottom
No relief
No end
Always there
just behind awareness
ready to spring forth
at the drop of a memory
the turn of a thought
about war
W . . . A . . . R
It haunts me
It pursues me
It badgers me
casting a pallor of gloom
throughout my being
My dark obsession with war
My love-hate relationship with war
My intrusive preoccupation with war
It seems they have always been with me
Christ--I was a war-baby
conceived at the turning point
of "The Good War"
An early memory is listening
with Mom by the new kitchen sink
to a radio broadcast of Eisenhower
consumate Father-General
explaining Korea
So hurtfully shamed I was
that Dad stayed stateside and didn?t fight
teaching navigation to the poor basturds
who got shot up over Dresden or Okinawa
when taunted by snot-nosed playmates in wooded forts
No trophies for me to brandish
I remember how precious
was the black plastic machine-gun
so shiney with the bright blood-red bullets
a ten-year-old's Christmas present to celebrate
As a barely aware boychild
voraciously I read
every war novel and voluminous war history
I could clutch my chubby hands on
On Saturday afternoons
again and again we?d watch the heroic endeavors
splashed on silvered screen in darkened matinees
of Wayne McQueen Cooper Murphy & Peck
or see reruns in flickering tv black and white
of Combat Flash Gorden Blackhawk
Very ironic my disappointment
and already seething resentment
fearfully whispering to buddies
in dimming light of Boy Scout campfire
that we wouldn?t have a war
to valiantly perform acts of courage in
when the '56 Suez Canal crises
sputtered to a truce without hostilities
just as Vietnam loomed
miniscule still
to stain inexorably darker
blotting itself right in the middle
of our generation
We got our war after all
Compelled I was to go
to volunteer
to experience that little war
would-be and dirty
of my generation
despite my abhorrence and disgust
my soul-quaking doubt
Jesus
I was a Peacenik demonstrator
and an advanced ROTC student in college
both horrified and fascinated
by my role of officer-soldier
Manically I dreamed blood-dark dreams
of violently gallant glory suicidal
charging up some thickened jungle slope
into a hail-fire of slicing AK-47 rounds
To have Charlie do to me
what I was too chicken to do to myself
even when blitzed on shots
of bar whiskey and San Miquel
And it happened
despite my fervent death-wish to the contrary
I survived
* * *
Now almost two decades later
despite Sara?s and my strong prohibition
against guns or war toys
son Thomas barely six
is fixated on
Rambo Ninja GI Joe
Transformers Commando Karate Kid
Through such means
do we teach our gender
the race-consciousness of war
Just this Saturday past for example
in K-Mart he wanted so passionately
the guerrilla-style M-16
"Please, Dad, Please. It?s only a toy, Dad. Please"
his beaming face begged up at me
So much a part of me
wanted him to have it
and one for me too
Then I could take him to some
deep dark sun-patched wood
to charge through some mutually fantasized
virtual image of heroically routing
for freedom
for the redwhite&blue
for mother and the darlin? little sweetheart
back in the homeland
a dreaded dastardly enemy?s ambush
in
gallant uphill rush
To show him the ropes
the tricks
the little secrets
of successfully challenging fate
again and again by repeated rolls
of the combat dice
To play war games (again) with him
Sometimes I despair
how I can teach him to abhor
what so much a part of me still so loves
Star Wars The Road Warrior Enemies
my precious New York Giants even
sublimated wish fulfillments to go forth and kill
Sara wishes for me not to be a woman
to suffer through the monthly cycle of hormones
I wish for her not to be a man
to suffer through this obsession with killing
Neat balance
So . . . what do I conclude
winging my way skyward toward Buffalo
through this brilliantly bright New York State early summer morning
over checkered fields of sundry muted green-browns
and haphazard windings of rivers and roads
with the tears just streaming again down
my sun-tanned-and-glassed countenance
while my fellow yuppie business-person passengers
pass the time behind designer attaché cases orWall Street Journals
Maybe . . . just perhaps
through this process of working through
once more my meta-grief about war
I shall somehow become more a peacemaker
waging peace
No war
is ever worth
one
single
tear
Early Summer, 1983
Garden City, NY
wide-mouthed, eyes slack
i stare in terrible awe
at the acres X acres X acres
stretching the wide horizons
on both sides of the road
just east of Davis Monthan Air Force Base
millions of dollars to the tenth or so power
of moth-balled flying war machines,
Sleek F-16s, F-14s, stubby A-10 Thunderbolts
even vintage F-4 Phantoms from the travesty
of my ignoble war so long, long ago
balanced on the left by scores and scores
of C-130s, C-5s, C-141s and here and there
a Stratotanker or three
a companion notes that they've cut way back
on the number of aircraft in storage
"Used to be over 8,000, now its down
somewhere near 5,000 or less planes"
all battened down tight, gathering dust
in the hot Southern Arizona desert
let's see, at a conservative estimate
of $25 million a pop neatly stacked row by row
that's billions and billions of dollars sitting idle
in this one Air Force Base alone
no wonder the poor go hungry
the homeless litter the dirty streets
and the sick and aged lie alone slowly dying
warehoused in overstuffed cadaver wards
while school children lay fallow in boredom
May 16, 2002
Tucson, AZ