Some survive by blocking the past. Others by working through it. For the combat veteran of Vietnam, reliving a critical moment in his war can become all too real. Even the smells come back. . . .
In my neighborhood (when I was a kid)
we didn`t know how to cure it,
but we knew how you got it,
”Walk around all day
in your wet bathing suit
and you`ll get Polio!”
That`s it–
We were ahead of the scientists
by about eight years!
Jeez, we were smart.
We also knew how to avoid
the second most dreaded injury
in the whole world,
”Don`t pick that up by yourself!
You`ll get a HERNIA!!!
or worse–the unspeakable
DOUBLE (cross yourself) HERNIA!!!
AARGH”
Forget about that no one
ever knew anybody who had one
(or both)
it was enough that grandmothers
shrieked against them–
and if They shrieked
We listened.
Funny thing about that neighborhood,
we always asked about the kids
you know, years later
like, ”Whatever happened to that
Irish kid, Tommy? Ya` know the one
I mean could hitta ball
to —-in` Mars
an` run like a deer–Phizzz,
he was fast . . .”
–He got killed in Korea.
”An ya` rememba` da` Feinstein kid?
Da` one wit da` tradin` cards?
Always flippin` always tradin`
`Super Flipper` he usta call himself . . .
Brudda` was a big wheel on da` Exchange?”
–Lieutenant Feinstein MIA in Vietnam.
Funny . . . thing about my neighborhood,
we knew so much about so many things
and mainly about how to love life
(the secret was in sharing yours).
But we didn`t know jack-shit
about keeping our kids safe from war–
forget about that we didn`t even know
anybody who ever found anything good
in one . . .
Maybe that`s why our grandmothers
shrieked so much when we left.
And maybe we shoulda listened.
Like you,
I was raised
in the centerfield of summer,
in a time
when everybody`s grandmother
was still alive
and kids and weeds grew
only to keep baseballs from bouncing
into another world–
It was pure and good
and unfortunately not real,
but it was sweet enough
to last a lifetime
as every boyhood should . . .
For us, it began
with fourth-grade dreams
of long home runs
and loud applause
and ended (for some of us)
when they moved
Jackie Robinson
off second base
never to return
from left field–
I knew right away
something very big
was very wrong
with my little world.
Later, that summer
there was a death
in the family,
but I had already been prepared.
For most of us, though
the ”game” ended
behind a locked bathroom door
just down the road from boyhood
about a hundred yards
from the end of the earth
where parallel lines meet
and the concepts of toys and sex
collide
in increasingly frequent,
fantastic visits
(lasting longer than a double-header)
and eventually causing
the dissolution of more secret pacts
among the many alliances of youth
than the surrender
of Nazi Germany–Girls, Yuk!
There, on that very spot
(about a block and half
from the Plains of Runnymede)
Hermes sewed the Levi Tag
into the butt seam of the world
as a monument to the end
of baggy boyhood
and the incessant
between-the-teeth whistlings
of ”the very young at heart.”
And Johnny`s Song Begins . . .
Johnny`s Song (I call it)
the song of each man`s soul
who has come from a boyhood
such as ours
and gone to a war
such as we have known
and as yet has no DEROS.
I would gladly put it to words
and play it for you
(if only I could) on a flute,
but what the hell,
you know it by heart anyway . . .
I heard it once
somewhere between the finite
mathematics of harmony
and the infinitely inescapable
possibilities of loneliness.
Heard it, in the sad music
of solitary whales
in the North Atlantic
and recognized the voice
of my own soul
swimming also
in the dark
in the cold
under the implacable pull of the moon.
When a man is lost
he returns to the last known thing–
It is possible the same is true
for souls.
I have rummaged, therefore,
through childhood
for the essence of my manhood
and the substance of my humanity.
I have found only where the boy
was born–and where he learned
to trust and to love,
but since I am no longer he,
it becomes a vague exercise
like viewing the cosmos
through a kaleidoscope
(delightful, but without value).
A lot of good men died in Vietnam.
But like some of you, I was born there.
So sometimes (like you)
I just get tired of waiting for me
to feel like me again
and on days like that–
late nights actually
(the days after Nam
have always come and gone
like meaningless ricochets)
I just pull back the final perimeter
of my fat and bivouacked-by-the-fire
middle age
to the very edge of the TV,
hunker down into the chair
and get black-faced in my mind
(and blank in my heart)
ready to slip under the wire
for one last patrol.
And with the last strains
of the ”Star Spangled Banner”
in my ears
the tube turns the night into snow
and I am gone–
Quietly,
quickly,
past the concertina
on the downward slope
of my nightly fears
into the no man`s land
from which my instinct draws
the knowledge to explain
(in dream symbols) all I failed to see
when first I lived it.
Tonight I am moving smoothly
(even in my pain)
and I am missing nothing–
I am a one man
search and recollect mission.
Back. Way Back, the way I came in.
And this time maybe I`ll find it.
Whatever ”it” was that went wrong.
Christ, it could be something
obvious that was there all along–
like being party to the least
experienced group of combat soldiers
ever sent into combat.
Some killers we showed up to be!
Of the nearly three million guys
”in country”
probably eighteen of us killed chickens
for lunch down on the farm–
one hundred and twelve
caught fish in a stocked pond
(big enough to keep)
and the rest of us manicured killers
let the likes of Burger Chef
do our bludgeoning for us.
Really, did you ever kill a chicken?
I never killed a chicken. Shit.
Where I come from kill a chicken
spend the rest of your life
in reform school. It was like a jingle.
I never killed anything.
First thing I ever killed
was no kind of thing at all–
it was an enemy soldier
which is a hell of a lot easier
to say than
the first thing I ever killed
was a man.
See that? Back to childhood again.
How unprepared for real life
we were.
I`ve got a sister forty years old
I don`t think to this day
my father has the heart to tell her
pork chops come from l`l piggies.
Damm! I go off to war and what do I get
in my bag of tricks from childhood?
What is it I tap into in crisis?
Thirteen Ralph Kiners
Triples in the entire starting lineup
of the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers
and the top half of the
game winning Spalding Hi-Bouncer
that warped off the end of my stick
into a dreaded ”egg-ball”
that was so vicious
that when poor Dumb-Eddie
clamped his mitts on it–it split
(and the run scored).
Pretty tame stuff
compared to Madam Tich`s
little boy, Nguyen, anyway
who came to kill me one afternoon
in the Plain of Reeds
(not near Runnymede)
and brought his own duck with him
as an appetizer
(strung upside down from his belt).
And oh, oh there it is!
Careful, just like it was real life
step over those same trip wires
like the first time.
Can I screw up? Can I blow myself up
in a late-night reverie
(a little on the frantic side)?
Can I change the past
and be dead all along? Oh, shit:
And there`s the pagoda
where I drop my Zippo
and bend to pick it up
as the rounds hit the wall above me
like freight trains
and I become the first guy in history
who can say cigarette smoking
saved his life . . .
I am moving even better now
and my guts tell me
that in these next moments
I will be reunited with myself
in that irrevocable moment of truth
when last my mind and body, heart and soul
were as one . . .
There it is, the church in the rain
(on this side of the canal from Cambodia).
On both sides
the flood rises
the war worsens
and the monsoons are no more interested
than typhus or the plague,
Through the storm the church looks
like a shadow
and in my mind it has ever remained so.
That night, when we were ambushed,
I was certain it was the only building
left standing between Kien Phong Province
and Augusta, Georgia.
When he woke up next morning,
Nguyen must have weighed 90 lbs.
(I could have killed him
with my bad breath)
instead somebody shot him 5 times
(the duck they missed completely).
When he crawled out of the water
to die on the thick mud outside
the church door.
(the flood left little room)
I had just left the church
preferring the rain and the danger
to the roistering inside
where cooking fires had been started
and men rode each other`s shoulders
to drape the wet clothing
over the support beams,
pitifully decorated with faded
pink crepe paper
scalloped and twisted by some long gone
custodian of the faith.
After several sharp words from me
they reluctantly gave up the torture
of two hapless captives
and as I turned to leave I noticed
that the dais was covered
with flat sheets of uncut
French grape soda cans
and on the podium an erect
decapitated statuette of Christ stood
(the head placed gently at the base).
Outside I sensed Nguyen`s presence
before I saw him
almost directly
at my feet;
Even in the rain
and the faint light of the church
his wounds were atrocious.
I sat with him in the mud
and put a soggy cigarette in his lips
to allay his fears of me
and stroked his hair,
”Toi com biet,” (I don`t understand)
he whimpered.
I was silent.
He was in unbearable pain.
He moved his head with great effort
(and even greater meaning)
to the pistol at my side.
Back inside the church
the muffled ”puff”
which blew Nguyen`s lights out
was barely discernible
above the rain
(but for me it still echoes).
I stopped by this dais
and spoke directly
to the Christ head,
”Toi com biet.”
Arms at my side
I turned into the laughter
of the smoke-filled room
into the gold, gap-toothed smile
of a little man with a big knife
holding Nguyen`s duck over his head
like a trophy–
raising my head to the rafters
I howled like a mad dog,
”ANYBODY FOR A LITTLE STICKBALL!?”
