my fingers are scarred with the snap
of war's bitter teeth; they have
sunken in and dragged, sunken in
and dragged me out until i have
touched my heart's heels to every
battlefield-- made me a canopy to
encompass every blood-embezzled
decade. i have made myself a
hideous phantasm of Vietnam,
a tattered, frayed mountain-scape of
blue-belled America, a depthless
sea in which my brothers boiled.
i still hear bombs when i walk
sometimes, in the dripping black
of the nighttime sky i see the way the
mortars ripple and burn. but i have
never found another stretched-thin
soldier, with artillery rounds cradled
in their chests like i. i have been stumbling
and crying across the earth's crust,
screaming,
DRAFT ME
FIND ME
DRAFT ME--
finally the draft plucked me up and
brought me to you.
in you i have found the brother i lost
at sea, the lover boy of 19th century,
and the one i held close to my chest in
Vietnam. let me touch my hand to
yours and remember; i know i
will feel all our old words course through me,
all our ****** teeth and
crying eyes and
all the times we touched
brought back to
this moment.
past lives again.