"mekong" poems
Here's some homework howlers,
By hilarious pupil terrors,
"An octopus has eight testicles."
Did I read that with my spectacles?
"Mozart sailed to Vietnam." For how long?
Why is there a clavichord in the Mekong?
"Rome is now in Africa." Do tell,
Didn't you learn map-reading too well?
"Mummy and Daddy's fave place is bed."
Do your parents really want this read?
Are these mud-coloured glasses, or what?
How did I survive teaching this lot?
It's hard to take them too serious,
Homework howlers, hilarious!
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 1:27 AM UTC
You took me to the Mekong River,
handing my documents over the border,
to the temple of the left-handed Buddha,
in the hope it would all make sense.
You took me to the brink of a stolen calamity,
you stayed with me in poetry; my eventual insanity.
You kept me with your golden voice,
you kept me with your wit.
You lost me with your genius;
how you discarded it.
You drove me to a calling that I could not fulfill,
just make statuettes from the ash that lines my windowsill.
Call it art, or call it a longing,
call it that animal burn for some kind of belonging.
You were a father, you called off the saints,
you cooled my tongue, my off-white yogi;
taught me these songs of pain, these songs of love
were meant to be sung by everyone.
Not the clever mind, nor the metronome heart
that keeps time with this life, that keeps pace from the start,
but for the stumbling folk, the slow off the blocks,
the maladjusted, the criminal; those who only see dark.
That this chip on my shoulder is a flute in which to sing,
that each failure I live, is a story I should bring
to the table of life, to the feast of recovery,
for every impatient soul with a hunger for discovery.
Each broken chord is a chance to sound alive,
amongst the crackle of the static, there is another side.
Another wasteland companion, another strangled voice,
that amongst all this hopelessness; we always have a choice.
To bend or to break in the shatter of our soul,
sometimes the glass must be half-empty in order to feel whole.
That some convenience pleasure is not always enough,
sometimes we must bear the burden;
sometimes we must hang tough.
Because the words will come, the sun will rise,
amongst the debris of yesterday, there is another side.
You took me to the temple and on bended knee I pray,
that I could lift a suicide, with just the words I say.
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 1:05 PM UTC
when it is still, it reflects
the baby blue sky above
the waves, each sparkle
with the light brown
Coconut toffee made by locals
muddy and Overgrown, it is
the beautiful home of
Wild pythons, chicken, and rooster
Rice Popping, snake wine
fermenting, hot black sand
wood boats of Green and
Brown with Red eyes that
lead the way across the
water to the Floating Markets
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 8:09 PM UTC
a refugee from Yale, and the stale stench
of old money, he took a job with the park service
where he maintained outhouses,
and got high in the cover of cottonwoods
this crap crew job gave him no
deferment from the draft, so he landed in Can Tho
he didn't clean outhouses there--little people did,
stirring his dreck in burning diesel for 75 cents a day
when his Huey was shot down in the
Mekong, only he and his door gunner survived
they hid, submerged in paddies until dark
hearing faint but ferocious voices of the VC
who never found them--and they made the
miracle mile back to base camp, covered in muck
that smelled like dung; a scent that stuck
with him in dreams, no matter how much he bathed
when he came home, he again labored
for the forest service, and asked for ********* duty
fearing if he lost the smell,
he would lose himself as well
.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 11:06 PM UTC
A witches brew forget what you knew about what you knew.
Summer heat comimg down to Haight street.
Black leather. Huey P.
***** South..coming round.
The lottery for your vacation in the Mekong Delta
Power to the people wattstacks.. love generations birthday.
Coast to coast conflagration.
Burn baby.
The Hearst chronicles
Apollo flew from the Cape.
Kennedy casket draped for
a procession.
Economic depression.......
Tick. Tick Tick.
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 9:00 AM UTC
a flock of them we call a ******
though not what I did to ****** men
I shot on the Mekong, who did nothing
but startle me a muggy morn
I watched them float,
face down in primordial mire,
not far from the wire, which
split their world from mine
birds came by noon
greedy passerines perching, pecking
on black clad backs; they sang not a word
of thanks to me
though I had made a meal of men,
for those who drop from blue skies--not even
when the flesh pulled swiftly from bone, and
blood flowed silent over their talons
July 4, 1970, Mekong Delta, Vietnam
Jul 4, 2017
Jul 4, 2017 at 5:51 PM UTC
I stopped being a story teller when I learned to read. I don’t think I ever learned to write. I think I was a story teller long ago, before the truth mattered. Before the truth became an obsession. Truth can get in the way when we want to tell a story. Truth has a way of narrowing the walls around us, putting the pressure on us, and sometimes squeezing the blood from us.
When I look at what I write, the things others would call poetry, the truth is nearly always inversely related to whatever value the words have. You see, there will always be someone who has felt more intense pain or joy. There will always be someone who has behaved more heroically or shamefully than any person about whom I can write. There will always be some common man or woman who has transcended his or her circumstances far better than anybody I have ever met or observed.
If I feel compelled to write about things, acknowledging that whatever great stories I might have had inside were long ago flushed from me by the waters of truth, then I must create people and events. I must conjure them up like ghosts. These apparitions have no form to be washed away.
The people who follow my words like tracks of an animal--predator or prey--should know I feel closest to being one who says something of value when the words are the greatest distance from the texture and grit of events. If I were to tell the truth, it would hurt. It would hurt me to write the truth, and it would hurt the reader who reads it. That reader has often rested complacently with the belief that the words are true, that history is really history rather than one of an infinite number of versions of the truth in this thing one might be inclined to call the book of life.
When you read my words, please don’t forget I don’t like the truth. I avoid it even in my stories that I believe are based on "real" occurrences. I avoid the truth. Yes, I may have seen the eyes of bloodied Vietnamese children when I was twenty, and yes, I may have sat in a bunker and listened to someone tell me they saw innocents slaughtered on the Mekong, or what the young warm blood felt like on their hands, and yes, I may have heard someone’s last words before hospice sleep, but all these things are only shadows cast by some light whose source I cannot see or comprehend.
Truth hurts. If you have read my words before, and felt something, there is no way to rob you of the feeling. Please, however, know that I was doing my utmost to hide the truth, because trying to reveal it would have been even more futile.
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 1:36 PM UTC
though they are whispering,
and my hearing muted by the years
and the cluttered clang of today,
their voices sift softly through the trees,
a ghost chorus, chanting
late songs from the killing grounds,
wafting warily around the trunks
on the backs of bent breezes
their names come like seeds
in the hopeful spring rains
as if they yearn to be born again
but the earth does not bring forth
their lost and longing faces
new names take their places
not in the choking jungle canopies
among the rubber trees, the bamboo,
the Mekong’s murky, mournful flow
where I last heard their plaintive pleas
drowned by the roar of chopper blades,
and my own metal screaming
but now in the desert, under
the Tigris’ and Euphrates’
unforgiving suns
still, I hear them, a labored litany
through the trees
yet asking to return
to sit with me, as the sun sets
white, on my gray eyes
and new voices silence
their wraithlike song
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 2:30 PM UTC
*mostly
I survived
like a spectator
at a Macy’s parade
my head, anonymous,
part of a blur of cold colors
and checkered sounds
that lined the
straight shores of the concrete stream
of the non floating floats
so it was for many a season
nothing to report,
no rhyme or reason,
until
the heat
of the delta
where I watched you
floating
--not amongst other floats
--not in crisp Manhattan winter
--not with manufactured mirth
and seasonal symmetry
but with a mangled monkey body
shredded by the rounds
from the M-60
my friend used to blow you from the shaded shore
into the muddy Mekong
all ten years of you
who did nothing except
stand in his sights
wearing black pajamas,
being alive,
for him to ****
Mar 28, 2012
Mar 28, 2012 at 9:33 PM UTC
just another day, this eve of May
with April's abnegation of her title, the queen of time
just another day, when the mother marked an "X" on the calendar,
holding her breath with hope, her coffee in one hand
and the red pen in the other, the hand she used to make two slashes
to bring your boy a fraction closer to home
he was to arrive alive and well in a fortnight,
neatly packaged, like a belated mother's day gift
a reasonable thing to expect, the eve of May,
since you, his father, had arrived the same way,
after her same hand, younger, more dream driven,
had brought you home with the same crosses
but you, the man for whom she waited, all those eves ago
were wrapped neatly only long enough to see April's thirty crosses,
May's eager ambitious start, and you came unwrapped,
leaving your uniform on the bedroom floor
in a heavy heap you said reminded you of what you left behind,
not in the steaming stench of Mekong’s paddies,
but in the quiet lanes of your hometown,
in the high school where you met her, the church where you married
and where you were sure you would be buried
‘twas not yet to be so, your eve of May passed,
along with thirty five more, though you were there,
walking the same streets, to you, the crumpled green garments
were still in a heap on the floor, even though
she had buried them in a drawer years before
you did not mark off the days, for they made you
wonder if their end meant your homecoming
and not his, an infidelity you felt
you watched March march by, and April finally relent
when “they” came to the door, neatly packaged themselves,
***** and filled with well formed words--you did not hear them,
though you saw their lips move, and you watched
your wife walk past, to the ancient kitchen,
the kingdom of the calendar,
and make a final "X" this eve of May
just another day, when another mother's son
who was crucified in the desert
would become a mystic memory
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 4:24 PM UTC
the only sounds, the sloshing of our jungle boots
and a cricket symphony
the air affluent with the odor of the paddies
oxen dung, rice-rich stagnant water
a lone golden cloud I see has two lives--one in the western sky;
another on the water’s face
and it suffers two fates, in unison, as light fades, while sky
births crimson before it morphs to black
in its silent death throes, I see the cloud melt from the heavens
but on the water its departure is less graceful
blurred, convulsive from our mad marching, our soles slaughtering
a would be perfect reflection of firmament
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 6:50 PM UTC
i.
i'm choleric and that's nothing new
ii.
wrapped in a quilt, i toil and sully our sarsaparilla love
iii.
in the frosty morning
an ancient beast rears its head
iv.
it implodes quietly at the bottom of the mekong
v.
this isn't language; it's pornographic license
May 28, 2016
May 28, 2016 at 4:01 AM UTC
If you want to watch, she'll dance again
Your drugs are expensive today
everything was cheaper before
and life is beginning to bore
If you want to **** again, she'll go another round
bring her down around town, smile and frown
So if Heaven is full, I know a place we can go
Let me know if this seedy city is too much
if her face is pretty much muck
I think you might be stuck
But she still dances, and you're still watching
from the balcony and the beacon
the lifeless girl drowned in the Mekong
where was she escaping to, or from?
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 2:21 PM UTC
gallery of
the grievers
ween afar
in plane
to propel
the dance
yet triple
in wings
that triage
Mekong dry-cleaner
those drastic
maitres'd the
guns of
Queen Village
noise plays
guitar in
Market Square
Jul 20, 2020
Jul 20, 2020 at 12:06 PM UTC
He has been waiting for this
His whole life
Mekong river delta
Sticky prickly heat
Ice calm blood red water
Fiery orang sky
He's swimming out
Further and further
Thinking of all the men
Who die in wars
Thinking of the friends
That he's seen die
He can't reach bottom
He gasps for air
Curiously not out of breath
Marilyn Monroe reaches out her hand
She is singing Phil Collins
"In The Air Tonight"
She knows what he did
He can't reach her
She smiles
Continues to sing
He should wipe off that grin
She knows where he's been
It's all been a pack of lies
She stops to speak
But no words come out
He reaches out
She does not
The sunset takes over
The fiery, now red sky
Black shadows on blood red sea
A soft raspy voice says
"I'm here"
Then nothing
Silence
A ceiling
Reality
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 1:36 AM UTC
he shoulders shame
carrying the weight of the dead,
slung over him
partnering with gravity,
these memory moguls slow him down
though he keeps trudging
when one drops, another
takes his place -- first his father, then
a brother, stillborn
not half the weight of a stone,
yet his carcass bends his back
like any full grown beast
for he did not weep
with his mother when its blue soul
was yanked from her womb
nor did he shed a tear
when his father's heart gave out
a billion beats too soon
when he forgets his sins as son
he recalls another one--the boy he
slew on a brown river's bank;
floating still in the Mekong, riddled
with the rifle's rabid rounds, he often catches
a ride in memory's stream
leading a relay team of shame shifters
he carries with him every step, though
the world sees him walk alone
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 9:13 PM UTC
Delta
Oh I wandered long ago
On the banks of the river,
On that dark delta
They call Mekong;
In all of this lonely place
I'm the only one livin';
All of my brothers,
Dark river, all of them gone.
I lost my mind
When I lost my brothers;
I lost my brothers,
I carry their song;
Now every night,
on the banks of the river,
I hear songs of my brothers,
Dark river, deep Mekong.
Now every river
Is just one river,
And every river
Holds a soldier's song;
Every soldier
Knows a soldier's story:
Sing to me gently, dark river,
Deep Mekong;
Every soldier
Knows a soldier's story,
Sing to me gently
Songs of my brothers,
Deep Mekong.
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 11:45 PM UTC
The wind told me,
"My current will take you to the ocean,
like blood flowing through the heart."
And I asked the wind,
"What if the river runs dry
and the heart stops beating?"
Then, you'll find where you truly belong-
the still river or the deep blue,"
Says the fleeting wind.
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 6:23 AM UTC
two of you,
on my green turf, at play
this sun-drenched day
squirrels courting? or plotting to gnaw on my trim
on a whim, it seems, since my trees have left you
ample acorns and plentiful pecans to fat your bellies,
sharpen your teeth
my neighbor has trapped and drowned a score of you
a dreadful thing to do, many would contend--though I cannot pretend, I’ve not called about a trap
but alas,
I could not watch you writhe wildly
and gasp for breath, without recalling the ancient paddies
and those in my sights whose play I ended, with the fast flick of a switch and easy pull of the trigger, on another sunny day
May 23, 2020
May 23, 2020 at 5:54 PM UTC
A man is lying sideways on a bed, his shoulder softly suffocating a pillow. He is confronted by the image of a lone G.I. at the mouth of the Mekong Delta, flanked by a Dutch colonel woman, pensively staring on. The man is now pointing his gun at the pillow, his aim obstructed by his own head. He is currently in matrimony with the dreams of yesterday, yet not as much so with his extremities.
"I wouldn't let it die if I were you," croons a voice from the impossible background, seeming to leap over the hurdles of inner commotion.
"Who's that? Whatever could you be?"
As forward as he was in his tone, he couldn't resist the dominated position he was in. Even less resistible was the pulling motion of the tunnel behind him. He is now falling back into the sun.
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 12:34 PM UTC
How I became a sea-cook
I have been a high ranking officer in the foreign legion
I have also been a sea master and a captain-lieutenant
in the American air force, flying anything from helicopters
to transport planes and jet bombers
I was in Vietnam when my moment of glory came, when general
Westmoreland's helicopter got problem and had to land
in a clearing, in panic radio silence was broken and
the North Vietnamese army moved in, it was then my expertise
kicked in I knew the area used a small chopper and saved
Him and his next in command, the pilot, was left to fend
for himself- he made it to the Mekong river and was picked up.
Westmorland was an ill-tempered man complained he could
smell alcohol on my breath- how else to fight this stupid war.
They gave me a medal and kicked me out, but I was still
employed by the foreign legion who gave me medals too before
transferring me to secret service duty.
My job was to find soldiers of the legion who had absconded
and committed crimes while in uniform.
The order was clear, bring them back or silence them,
but I’m not suited for this work, so I quit and became a cook in
the merchant navy.
Mar 23, 2017
Mar 23, 2017 at 3:24 PM UTC
of a million paddies fed by Mother Mekong, one he knew best
one where he waded knee deep at noon, naked except for a **** cloth
though double wrapped in pain, after the ****** left his family frozen in black
only a mad night before, in a war his dozen years could not comprehend
he still heard them calling his name from the razed ville, the muddy waters
where he sloshed in half circles, aping a reverse arc of the sun
as if moving from west to east, he could rewind time to yesterday
when they hunkered with him, and took shelter from the dry season sun,
unawares what else under a pure white sky could birth fierce fire
Nov 29, 2017
Nov 29, 2017 at 8:42 PM UTC
Let it be ambiguous
Let it be dark
Chapel Hill Jay
Sacramento Mark
Trust takes time
What rises must fall
Yearbook at Satellite
Reno study hall
Trust takes time
1:37
Wendy, Susan, Judi
Kevin
Ms. Susie had a Steamboat
Me on the Mekong River
Jonas can see Beyond
Just like the Giver
Fiona!
Nov 13, 2022
Nov 13, 2022 at 11:59 PM UTC