| ECOLOGY | SOCIOGRAMS | PLACES | IDENTITY | INTIMACIES |
| VIOLENCE | DEATH | GODS | WORLD |
In time of war and horror, high
the sun bursting athwart
the bloodied Campanian hills
as still as death, the soldiers sneaked,
too close together,
across the bristling grass,
low their voices under
the funereal vault of heaven.
A cricket chirped,
a belt squeaked,
a small voice moaned
from out a uniform:
"Oh fuck the army and damn it all,
the dirty cook and the President,
the Nazi bastards and shitty Jews,"
said the fair-haired boy of Boston,
his nose dripping and guts turning.
And the Mexican Sergeant Santez,
an unjust millennium inscribed
on his staring stone face,
said "Shut up." And Ringione,
pale, nervously peered,
looking for the signal of hospitality
owing to the prodigal son.
And Corporal Noble grinned lupinely
from out of the Arkansas hills.
"Why don't we have a sergeant
who wants to live," he jeered.
"You do. He's dead."
"Come on. Let's shake ass."
"Listen!"
"Dog patrol, come in."
"No contact with enemy, out."
"Proceed."
"Where?"
"Do not over-extend yourself."
"How, us'n jest four."
"Roger. Over and out."
They humped their packs,
and gripped their guns,
and shuffled along
the if-ever path home.
Flying to the attack with
soaring flares and rash youth
away from the drab bleak to the
erratic rhythms of the wild asses
grim plodding into warscarred soil
where flesh is driven into the ground
and scuffled by mulish boots
the marvel being how can you stay alive
but why would you want to
given your every fiber is vibrating
with fear and fatigue:
That's what makes a good soldier.
Single file under the poplars
Quiet, listening to the shells:
"It doesn't sound bad."
"They're going the other way."
"Oh."
"Halt!"
Fanning out in the earliest light.
Aching stomachs, straining ears.
The "B" company guide points left,
Then right, then straight ahead.
"They should be here, and there."
"Hurry up."
"Hey! Here."
"How bad is it?"
Withered face, glittering eye:
"Where were you? We looked
for you at Midnight."
"Get going!"
Mushrooms bubbled out of the dead earth.
"Come on, lucky,
here's my water can."
A chill clawed up the spine like a cat.
Leaden heart, loose bowels
"So long." "Good-bye."
"I've got more to say."
"Yeah..So long."
"Good-bye."
There goes God without me.
"Larry, where are you?"
"Over here... shit."
As often happens in shootings,
the first little bullet goes astray.
the second little bullet hits far away.
the third li’l bullet fills him with fear.
bullet four whips by his ear.
the fifth one nips a twig above.
the sixth slug gives his pack a shove.
while the seventh is a foolish one,
for the eighth is traceable to his gun,
and the ninth little bullet ends all his fun.
Thus while nursery rhymes
reach the number ten,
battles rather earlier
bring death to men.
Khmer Buddha grins
facing out of ruins,
tall grass, slow snakes.
Sharp bells beat a rapid pulse
of quick, graceful people
through the unremembered
glory of Anghor Khat.
Sharp bullets beat like
finger drums upon
an ancient wall,
so stones splatter
in the grass
like snare-drum brushes,
and strike a cymbal tattoo
upon the bells.
**
Never mind gods, we know them;
Ask one and all great governments
why should a million people die,
driven, starved, massacred,
for doing nothing bad.
***
Buddha, see what detachedness conveys!
Karl Marx, see what classless revolution causes!
Herbert Spencer, what do the surviving fittest say?
Private First Class Jerrold Perkins
parted the fronds of a gorgeous giant orchid,
anxious, his round face sweating in the first rays
of the morning sun, he looked the infant
aborning, emerging head-first from the womb.
He was to take his part in the eradication
of a VC hamlet, already stirring with childish
voices and notes of alarm at the sensed enemy:
him. A mile away was his bull-dozer.
We are in positions, silly to be so scared.
Loudspeakers would blare forth: hear them!
Who had made that record, what's it say?
Voices of the villagers in argument come on the air.
Several wander near now,
should they be cut down?
No instruction is ever clear enough.
Joe on the left and Joe on the right fire,
feeling they have clear instruction or
don't give a damn anyway. And the
whole village runs for the jungle,
some guns fire some guns don't,
A flame-thrower belches, signal that
the village is ready to be destroyed,
you don't feel so bad,
it can't be much of a home,
straw, bamboo, pots, mats,
no goods, no loot,
chickens have fled too,
just a few bodies --
no materiel of war, as the captain says.
Time to get the bull-dozer
and bury the village,
it'll teach them a lesson,
us too if we needed one,
but, thought PFC Perkins, no need,
we have our orders.
(1967-8)
When the rain splatters
through the thick oil of dawn
what does the pedicab driver do?
In the wicked gloom he awakens
from the perch of his customers,
dons his white helmet
steps down and raises a shade
over the buggy, adds a plastic
patch over the leak.He drapes
a cloth over the front,
and waits for person number one,
edging his machine a bit to block
the intersection, to catch the breeze,
and the eye of the first client.
He stretches, sets his feet stockily to the alert
unconcerned about being struck by a jeep or
moved by a cop so early in the day.
Then lights a fag between his thin lips.
Plane motors in the humid close dawn
roar their bright afterburners
and roosters angrily croak at them. Flares drop slowly,
orange lanterns in the cloudy stage-set sky.
It is endless dark and the noise
erupts from behind the stage
which is deserted and which the actors
balk to enter. A bat coughs
harshly choking on his beetle.
Sweat is too thick for a wash, a
clown's paste, photogenic,
luminous, itchy, it
is scraped off with a knife,
down limb, down back, down chest,
now cut the bread for breakfast.
What trick will excite the claps.
There was Lu, and Rosie,
and Ti Van, May Van, and Su or Sue. And all
these were friends. The bar
girls of the Dixie Club.
And of course Lu Wi was Mamasan.
Clean his glass good, said Mamasan,
and the bartender did. Picked it up,
poked his dirty cloth all the way to the bottom
flushed it, shook it,
and put it down gently, and then
perked up his head so he could see Garvin.
What'll it be?
Garvin'e blue eyes twinkled
out of the fatness of his face,
whatllit be? whatitllbe? whatayagot?
The question distressed Han who could say
whatllitbe? passably well.
Then he got into trouble
with Schenley, Vat 69, Dewer's--
that he liked, everybody heard Dewers the same way
Dewers? he said hopefully,
fine said Garvin: he was not out to get anyone.
Dewers, repeated Mamasan authoritatively.
She smiled. The girls along the bar
smiled. Mamasan liked Garvin.
They liked Garvin
Garvin settled back to drink
squirming his bottom until
he found the bulging beaten pad
of the bar chair where the spring didn't stick.
Han filled the glass.
Oh I like Vietnam, Vietnam good!
he said , as he drank.
I like Mamasan better
than Madame Louise Fong and her Key Club.
This he said to the Major
his friend who had said
I'll have the same and drank too.
The government is full of crooks.
The kids are all thieves.
The viet Cong are all over like cockroaches.
The women are prostitutes.
We'll never make it.
Major says Who cares. Up your ass!
and the whiskey is drunk placidly
Mamasan says never say yes to
Americans, say I must do it my way
you will like it, see?
The nuns' church is around the corner,
nothing here applies to them, says Garvin,
the people hate us,
they can see us
but they can't see the VC.
The major's eyes -- no twinkle
-- but he didn't feel the hate.
remember en route to Viet Nam,
the great ocean of creation, the bursting ring of fire.
Beneath the garbage much could be lost.
The modern mandarin so many of them.
A propaganda cart rove the streets
almost giving its stuff away
but not so, because no one
believes anything that is free.
The story of atrocity of the day,
who does what to whom and
where when why and so what?
Cholon is little China,
a million people who are
not Chinese nor Vietnamese
and potentially persecutable by both.
Wish that everything was as clean as rice
still bloody rice is very nice.
Alcohol is cheap and lets the
rhinoceros kiss the soul of Jesus.
Buddha be what Buddha is,
what is cannot become.
The bombs used to explode below
like blossoming flowers
under the fast camera,
now they just strike.
The baby-faced soldier jumped
he held his shredded foot,
the little girl smiled: she
didn't want to be blamed.
Search and destroy, search and destroy,
oh what joy to search and destroy.
The Afro-american said why these men
always complain as if they had
it so great back home.
The montagnard is a tiny fellow
death as short as his spear
that he carries on his back
in his hands the gun.
The disciplined marine ignores
the total context of anything,
grab them by the balls and
their hearts and minds will follow.
Nguyen Van Duc has a wish.
He wants to go to the toilet.
His superior is talking
to his American counterpart,
who are looking for their program chiefs,
of the RD, RFPF and so on,
so he cannot go and shifts his weight,
holding his rifle between his legs,
and the VC slices him open,
so N V Duc goes all over the sunny road,
and doesn't stop running until he is a dry piece of leather.
This is American way,
he work very hard,
says Mr. Huan shoemaker,
he have wife and children
he no see. He only here one year.
Watch out! You good driver, I know.
The Chinese mercenary will not live long.
noone likes him.
American pilot confesses,
his mentor corrects him.
The great peace-loving pilots
who were tried were
Clark Kent and Ben Casey.
One helicopter all noise and fury,
big helicopter flight in
the sky like mosquitos.
Are you ready to fight yet General?
Not yet,
there aren't enough cans in the dump
not enough kleenex, wristwatches, chewing gum.
Planes from the carriers are ready, but ships
carry everything with them.
Let them go ahead.
we have to build a new city.
we have to build a new harbor.
we have a million billets to provide,
and hospitals all over the place,
the printing presses for psychological warfare
have not yet arrived, though the Hollywood
movies are here now in good number.
No USO yet in many places,
no coffee and doughnut stands
and the MP's to protect them from the VC's.
Won't be long though,
just hang on,
then it won"t take long and
we'll be back in the
land of the great PX.
Peering through the monsoon curtain
are the ROCs, moving, though they
are not supposed to march in mud.
We try to do things right in Vietnam,
we clean streets like Chicago,
make jungle safe like Central Park,
make real violent boom boom like TV,
honest politics like LBJ,
I don't know
why is not all working.
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