The night you got shot
I pushed your scrambled remains
like a sack of red meat
onto the deck of the chopper.

I wonder what it felt like,
those bullets tearing through you?

It must have been quick,
but what is quick to the dead?

It's forty-three years later
and I am sixty-four
but you will always be nineteen.

Which of us was lucky?

Last night you appeared in a dream
all shot to pieces and gave me
an enormous, important hint
about my future which I forgot
as soon as I woke up.

Believe me, buddy, you haven't
missed much. The world is still all
****** up and don't mean nothing.

No one has learned a single ****** thing.

Would you have had a good life?
A happy life? A successful life.
All pretty much moot.

But at least, you would
have had a life.