Old friends clean and neat
And full of responsibilities
Rust holes in my memories
Each time they ask me
If I ever killed anybody in ‘Nam,
My tragedies average, they suppose.
Machine gun bullets cutting down legs,
Zigzaging up bodies.
I dream double,
Fall asleep in San Francisco and wake up
In Saigon crowded with the ghosts
Of thieves and lovers—trees, buildings,
Pedestrians, even their shadows burning,
Pouring clouds of smoke in the sky.
That’s why I think about dying young
On summer afternoons when the sun
Beats down on my skull
Like a blackjack wound,
Minefields studded with the stumps
Of amputees instead of trees.
And am not surprised
When October’s blazing colors,
Always a godly sight or almost so,
Tell my hungry eyes no
Before they ask--followed by
November nights
Without an address or an alibi
Lost in a maze of one-way alleys
No map will ever master,
Knowing I’ll spend the rest of my life
Hiding behind chalk marks
On locked doors
Unless I slide my health forms
In the right slot, take my Meds
And stop believing the bad-ass lies
Cocaine whispers in my nose.
Then remember the 58,022 names
Engraved
On the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
And try but not very hard
To get on with my life.
***
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