Do your scars ever insist
That you touch them?
Do they hover above your skin,
Just so you'll scratch them?
Like maggots
Crawling over a carcass
Wounds that will never close
The burrowing mouths
Leave permanent trails
Because the flesh is dead.
So contrasting,
The pink of healing
That was once an angry scab.
But you scratched at that, too,
Because it stuck to your body
Like some parasitic tick.
And I wonder now,
If the circles of scars
That trail down my forearm,
Are like a line of dark ants
That will follow me forever.
Or if in their ugly hatching,
I can see metamorphosis.
But in the corner of my mind,
I know
They will always follow.
And in the corner of my room,
I hear the buzzing
Of a fly.

I was tripping, tripping
Over to Vietnam
Their hands were ripping, slipping
In hot blood
While I asked how many people they've shot
How many kids?
How many villages burnt with a fire so hot
So cold, the beers cracked open
Sweating like the citizens trying to stay alive
Rage trapped in their heart-like pig pens

I was told to take pictures
Told to record every explanation
Every lieutenant major gave a lecture
As calves were sewn to thighs
Thighs sewn, stitched
The thighs piled high
In buckets of ****** ice

I might have a son
I visited a madam
Down in la Drang Valley
Should've kept it in my pants
Now my sons running naked
Through streets paved in fresh blood
Pros ably pushing drugs or kidnapping women
Selling women
Because his mother was sold to me
In Vietnam

Cycling
High cadence
Low resistance
Tight corners
Horse class climbs
Mountainous descents
     Back up!
Horse class climbs?
At my current weight
More like fat *** climbs!

Cycling
No high calories
Low carbohydrates
Tight spandex
More practice climbs
Mountains want destroyed
      Go forward!
At my cycling weight
More like what climb?

Man needs little to endure life's hardships
Gold, silver, and jewels plunder a man's soul
Water, food, shelter, and companionship
Despite life's conquests, must remain the goal
Water quenches what possessions cannot
A custom carriage fails as a life source
Nor does it quench when August days grow hot
Nor nourish folks when seasons fall off course
Look for umbrage, safety from barren land
Shelter to the pains of nature denied
Yet, man's elemental resource reigns man
The shipwrecked, fed and quenched, unsatisfied
Possessions, wealth, and even basic need
Can't provide the nourishment humans bleed