|
BEYOND THE QUIET
There are some moments
Too sacred for any words to interrupt
The quietness.
There are other times,
And places,
Where one is too scared
To utter anything, but your breath.
There are moments right after
A long fire fight,
When it is so quiet
You can hear the grass around you growing.
It is deathly quiet
Like in a church.
There are no words
Just resting minds
And bodies,
Absorbing the moment
Of quiet.
It gets so quiet
You become concerned that
Others might hear you crying within.
But this quiet,
No matter how restful
It may be,
Is nothing more than,
The eye of a hurricane,
Just waiting for another unholy moment
To attack your soul!
#
August 17, 1967 - Iron Triangle, South Vietnam
Return To Poem Menu
HELICOPTER BLUES
The rising sun,
Replaced by the rising and falling
of so many rotor blades
Pushing across
The skies
Taking warriors
From place
To place
Taking no one
Where they want to go
Like an endless sunrise,
rising and falling
and casting shadows
on the delta face
of Vietnam,
They keep moving.
Forever,
pushing across the skies
in search of blood
and battles
and taking
no one
where they wish
to journey.
#
September, 1967
- Somewhere flying over Cambodia
Return To Poem Menu
DEATH SEASONS
I saw a naked tree
A skeleton to the wind.
Standing without green
With yellow death
Falling all around
Its muddy feet.
Yet,
No one mourned aloud
Because we knew
That death seasons
Never last forever
And
That some day,
Newness would spring forth
And grasp onto those bare limbs
And
that seeds,
those once dormant angels,
sleeping in a grave like earth ,
would capture the sun’s rays
once again,
And
That life would continue.
#
June 17, 1967
- Some where over the Delta, South Vietnam
Return To Poem Menu
LEAVING SOUTH VIETNAM
Saddle up troop
Its time to go
Your freedom bird
Is getting ready
To fly
You got your ass still
And your GI Bill
So what the hell
No more time
For looking back.
It is time
For leaving
No one is going
To hold your hand
So step into that plane
And
Back
To the USA!
It is time
For leaving now,
But
It seems it
Always was!
#
November 6, 1967
- On a Freedom Bird back to the USA
Return To Poem Menu
I PICKED UP
A NEWSPAPER TODAY OR WAS IT YESTERDAY?
I picked up the newspaper today,
The pint was still bleeding
Across the front pages
With anti –war sermons.
My mind ran naked
Over those scholarly written prophecies
Until I focused on a picture
From the war zone
Hidden on those back pages
Of perversions and advertising.
Some GI was shown
Smoking dope
Out of the gun barrel
of his friend’s M-16
While on Page One,
A picture showed
a young
Hippie putting a flower
In the barrel
of a National Guardsman’s rifle.
Make love
Not war!
I held back
my own tears
While standing
In line,
Waiting to pick up my
Unemployment check
I folded the newspaper
And looked around me
At all the other ex-warriors
Waiting in line.
#
November, 1968
- The Unemployment Office - San Jose, California
Return To Poem Menu
| 
