From...

Buddhist Trucker

Vietnam Trilogy

Memories of my War

I: The Last Patrol

  I hated the war.

  I feared the war.

  A high school football injury kept me out of the war.

  I protested the war — a colonial war.

  I was in Chicago in ’68.

 After the war, I fell into step with an outfit of vets who called themselves “The Last Patrol,” marching the land, despite the command, to give it up, and, to… just… forget.

  As a journalist, I wrote their stories as a blind man describing activity.

  Years later, as a VA nurse, I met them again at the gate, to hold their hand, while they made a plan, to escape their final captivity.

II: Crossfire

The war was like a surgeon with an ax hacking open the chest of a generation, exposing its’ nurtured faith in the Idea of Progress to the ragman’s acid breath.

The war demanded oaths that could never be broken without abandoning our rights to moments of rest.

The war was a game played by masters of the occult with pieces carved out of bone for the stimulation of interesting conversation and the thrill of causing pain.

The war was cheered on by chambers of commerce whose only desire was to lead a parade.

The war left me homeless and always on the edge, wounded in places scars never show, hit hard in a crossfire with no Purple Heart for me to leave on the pillow of the one gentle lady who showed a little sympathy.

But what’s been most hard all these years has been knowing that somebody will sacrifice a child to avoid any confrontation with the authors of their mythology.

III: The Wall

I've heard it said

and I've been told it’s true

that they’re still out there

somewhere

alone

confusing their beds

for a field of stone,

like the day they came home

on a train

in bags

to dance forever

on the wall of names,

in the cold,

in the darkness,

eternal rain,

eternal reminders

that someone’s to blame.