Where Did you Sleep last Night?

Waverly Poems

Your dreams Haunt you In the backseat Of your Toyota As you try to sleep In the heat Of summer Not a piece of lint in your pocket Can't even afford a chicken wing But you remember when You hit the foothills of the Himalayas Home of that blue jewel, lapis lazuli A young flight medic Getting intimate with mortality Playing footsie With the angel of death Pulling mangled bodies Back to the rotary wing A couple missions here Couple missions there Nothin' Too Crazy, And then, boom, Reality got stripped bare Ripped holes in the fabric. A break In the hellish normalcy You stared into the eyes of your enemy Pale blue, almost lazuli Just tryin' to save his soul Nothin' like fighting at 1,000 ft, huh? 'Cause he's got his mind made up As he reaches for your pistol You're trying to start an IV Ain’t **** crazy? You already thought you were dead A zombie saving the lives of the free This has to be a dream He was just supposed to be a casualty: Shrapnel through and through ******* chest wound Tourniquet to the right leg One on the right arm, too Vitals, iffy Hypotensive, trending Needed fluids, soon. So when this ************ Started reaching And couldn't nobody hear it? You could hardly believe it Crew chief and the pilot were talking Not paying attention Man, Adrenaline is a wild thing You struggle He struggles *where's the ******* chief?* Guess death's coming at 1,000 ft The bird howls like a banshee And God's out on patrol It's either you or he This is the way it has to be There's a ringing in your ears Is that his heartbeat? Yours? The chatter of your teeth? Or just an animal roar? Didn't get to see your mother Your daddy either Never felt their love Now you know They were just two people Maybe you could've had a wife Maybe a kid or two after you got home and all this was through. Now, it's either him or you. There's a break in your memory As you return to summer That's been happening more lately Forgetting things VA sent you to a specialist Said you need more testing Could be that Could be this Gonna need an MRI or contrast CT Could be something Could be nothing You look up at the drooping upholstery Hanging from the ceiling Of your beat-up Tundra. You still feel the sweat of the mountains, You still taste the gasoline Of that chopper's thunder. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat Outside your truck Gunshots Clipping the horizon On the other side of the parking lot Near the Walmart beside Verizon Ain't no lullaby Just a requiem. You close your eyes to sleep But all you can hear is that chopper scream.