“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.   Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”                              Marshall McLuhan

You understand where I'm coming from,
Reader Rabbit, you twisted ****? Maybe not;
While you and your boy/girlfriend, later your wife/husband,
Were ******* backpacks around Europe,
I was of a less fortunate, less frivolous cohort,
Like the poor, who always miss the fun stuff.
So I stayed home and waited, dreading time,
Treading water in Queens,
Doing the graveyard shift at the Wonder Bread Bakery in Jamaica,
(No, not that Jamaica, mun.)
Building bodies 12 ways, and sweating out the inevitable,
Praying to my lesser god not to hear from my local draft board.
And who was I to disturb the universe?
“It ain’t me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son;
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, lawd naw.”
(Send  "Fortunate Son" Ringtone to your Cell)  
I was just another cynical working-class hero,
Unlike you, numb nuts, and the rest of your silver surfer friends.
I knew I’d wind up without my teddy bear,
Convinced I’d end up sans security blanket,
With no ****-vacant musical chair,
To plop my sorry non-exempt, 1A **** cheeks
Down into when the music stopped,
When the music’s over, turn out the light--Jim Morrison,
Lizard King--turn out the light.
My horse, my horse . . . no wait . . . **** the horse . . .
My kingdom, my kingdom for a 2-S college deferment!
What kingdom?  
What was it Jesus said?
Not of this earth, anyway.
Colonial Indochina: rich man's war, poor man's fight;
It was such an efficient way to rid trash from poor neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I’ve been having a little trouble adjusting ever since,
Since I got back from that Kafkaesque Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
My personal Cold War thriller,
My Tecumseh Sherman “War is All Hell” war,
My war: 45 years ago next week.
These things take time:
So says the recorded message on the VA’s PTSD Hotline.
45 years ago I packed up my duffle,
Packed for what I thought was going to be my last time in uniform,
Grabbed my Army discharge papers, and
Limp-dicked out the side door of,
The Veterans Hospital in St. Albans, County of Queens.
I’d like to say I never looked back. But I’d be lying.

(cue PSA: VA Reaches Out to Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin,
Contacting nearly 570,000 recent combat veterans May 1,
To ensure they know about VA's medical services and other benefits.)

Today and every day is 11-11, Veterans Day—
What gets me now is that all my time since The Nam,
Is on average two lifetimes,
For all those sent home, bagged and tagged.
Is it survivor’s guilt? I doubt it.

You may not understand this, but I miss that freaky jungle.
I felt safe there.
How quickly I learned to expect the unexpected,
And that meant to expect the worse,
Finding my comfort zone the more uncomfortable, the worse it got.
I miss the wet weight of the air,
The cloying heat and humidity.
Humidity: a plain and simple meteorological miracle,
When you have plenty of time to really think about it,
Which I did: 365 days and a wake-up.
You know that whole gorgeous hydrologic cycle thing?
I miss the rain, the sound of falling rain.
I miss the other sounds, every buzz and click,
All the arcane and dismal things that go screech in the night.
And that relentless insect hum,
The jungle vibrating and intense,
The colors vibrating too, especially that electric green,
A green so vivid, every leaf and vine,
"The world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity,” I read in some nature magazine,
Lying naked in bed while my therapist ****** me off the other day.
All those freaky creatures great and small,
Every miraculous living thing that’s really alive and thriving.
And this is why--I think,
Getting obnoxiously philosophical for the moment,
This explains why it got to be so easy to waste what was alive and thriving over there, including and especially our selves.

Death never seemed that permanent, that final over there.
And besides, you couldn’t **** anything for that long,
The critters all looking their wet and slimy same.  
Two minutes in The **** and you were
Killing every ******* gnat and bug,
Every leech and snake, anything &
Anyone that just looked at you sideways.

And the flora? Did I mention the flora?
Soupy Sales: (Smack! Bam!)  “I told you not to mention that.”
The flora:  the plants grew back and they grew back quick.
You chop a path on recon and the next day it’s not there anymore,
So you chop the whole way back to the L-Z.  
Chop, chop, Hop Sing!
You were one smart ****, Hop Sing,
Safe and sound in Lake Tahoe, Nevada-side,
Cooking up Ponderosa pork bellies for,
The Cartwright Clan: Ben, Adam, Hoss & Little Joe.
Meanwhile, I’m not earning any frequent flyer miles,
Aboard a chartered TWA, coffee-tea-or-me,
Royal **** airplane to Saigon,
A place called ** Chi Minh City today.
I remember looking around at the faces on that airplane,
As we landed at Tan Son Nhut,
Those forlorn godforsaken faces,
Black and Chicano and poor white trash boys.
Scared shitless, of course,
But we really were jolly green giants over there,
American conquistadors, Cortez and the Boys,
Seeking gold and glory and, of course,
*******, (www.urbandictionary.com):
That sweet wet hole we all crave,
Can't go for too long without,
Center of our life's desire,
What gives women the upper hand in almost every situation,
Except when you pay in South Vietnamese piastres,
Your basic exchange rate $3.00 *******.

Yes, we were American conquistadors,
But traveling light this trip,
Our black-robed Jesuit fathers having missed the flight.
That’s right, for us no Ad majorem Dei gloriam this time,
Our mission so simple and so clear:
SEARCH & DESTROY.
But mostly, Destroy.

And pretty soon you worked your way up the evolutionary ladder,
From bugs, to fish, to frogs and snakes,
Small varmints and reptiles, birds and rodents;
And by the time you taxonomy out to the runway,
You’re pretty much whacking anything that moves,
Anything you feel like, pretty much any time,
All the time, sometimes just to pass the time,
Just to break up the ******* monotony of it all.
So making the anti-personnel leap got sort of easy:
They all looked the same, didn’t they?
They all wore the same pajamas,
And it was never conducive to grunt longevity,
To nitpick the civilians from the soldiers,
Never a good idea to waste time distinguishing friend from foe.

Good Morning, Vietnam:
We really were nerve-gassed-Adrian Cronauers over there,
G-2 Army oxymoronic intelligence stiffs,
Having a little difficulty finding the enemy,
Having one hell of a time finding a Vietnamese man named "Charlie."
They're all named Nguyen, or Tran, or Thanh or Trong or Bao or Phuc . . .
Oh, ****, I get it now.
I grok the how and why,
Of all the names we’ve used for centuries to dehumanize the enemy:
***** and Nips, Chinks and Slopes,
Huns and Krauts, Redskins and Ivans,
Redcoats and Rebs, Zulus and Mau Maus, *****, Ragheads and Sand ******* . . .
To dehumanize is to be dehumanized.
Nominal dehumanization; linguistic trickery.
It made it easy . . .
Well, easier . . .
To **** you.

What was it Pope Innocent III’s legate advised?
“**** Them All.  Let God sort ‘em out.”

Is it smell of burning flesh that makes me so digress?

Yes, I miss that freaky jungle, my friend.
I miss knowing what to expect and what was to be expected.
And most of all I miss that absolute confidence,
My self-liberating soporific certainty,
That I did not give a **** whether I lived or died,
And no one else did either.
I miss the peaceful place to go,
Coping with fear by letting go,
By writing off my life,
My future "in-country,"
My 12-month tour of duty,
My 365 T.S. Eliot Ash Wednesdays,
Learning to care and not to care,
Cultivating indifference as to,
Whether or not I ever made it Wee, Wee, Wee,
All the way home again.
The answers were right there,
Always there, all the time,
In nursery rhymes, and counting songs,
In psalms and arias, and every blues and rock lyric,
Right there, so right ******* there,
In Kris Kristofferson/Janice Joplin parlance of the times:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

And life for me since then--
ONE BIG, FAT-TITTED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY!

What was that Walter Sobjak in The Big Lebowski said?

“This is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules.”

quiet evening beach, "Nguyen Tat Thanh"
long stretch sugary brownie field
two strangers  by the shore
the waves crawl with lure

succulent are the thoughts
two caught in bait of mind games
exchanged soft kisses and caress
as her eyes met the sea

yet they're in control in their heads
no dramas but
a feeling of detach
no promises to profess

the voyage of time runs a race
tailored moments kept hidden
morning comes another day
yesterday a tale story to say

HUMAN NATURE**

Many come from lands
that seem light years away.
Speaking tongues that tickles,
as neurons flow in an open mind.
Strange, yet like the sounds of Jade,
makes you giggle as you realize
all that is being said is,
“Hey Red, how are you doing man?”
~~~
Many come looking for HOPE;
work, a way to feed their young ones.
Many come simply to survive
the destruction
that once was home.
They come to escape being disappeared;
come because of disappeared loved ones;
sons, husbands, daughters
found some day, maybe, in mass graves.
Disappeared by:
Ton Ton Macoutes,
Death Squads, Dincote,
Special forces conquistadors,
or any number of SOA trained
armies/soldiers stamped with:
“Made In The U.S.A.”
~~~
They come to ‘live free’ or
find ‘democracy’, ironically
to the very place
that is responsible for this disgrace-
fullness committed against humanity.
~~~
They come to live
and yet, their dreams are of
HOME!
Home where there is peace.
Home, where jobs are meaningful,
not enslaving.
Home, where the land is yours
and crops plentiful,
allowing you to live as human beings.
~~~
These are proud,
brave and daring men
with names like:
Thanh, Aftab, Simon, Mukesh
and Donovan.
These are determined, dignified women
with heads held high
and names that seek the skies:
Ekta, Mai, Kenya, Nazma
and Sing.
~~~
Looking out at their varied shades of skin,
wistful eyes, reflecting like
fall leaves in a vast rain forest,
it is easy to get lost
in these cold waters of diversity.
Looking
Lost
Wishing
Dreaming of a dripping wet world
as seen from outer space;
AS ONE.
No borders,
No boundaries,
flying thru a blue, cloudless sky.
Breaking ALL traditions chains.

(written using the pen name)
~~redzone 4.2.01~~
Posted 10.31.15  Aztec Warrior

My Dear Việt Nam,

There's no day that I think
To the colors of your charm:
Hoàng, like the sun and the sand, the imperial domain;
Thanh, the green wilderness protecting your heart,
But not only that: the sea and the sky as heaven before my eyes;
Hồng, are the veins, the red flowing blood, that the soil has received, that the earth has  consumed;
And the purity of lotus, born in the mud,
is painted in red but fading into Bạch.

You measure time by smoking cigarettes,
out on balcony where sunlight strokes
the wooden panels soaked from the rain
cast down from skies that are shades of blue
too beautiful to paint on a borrowed canvas,
once belonging to your mother
who brought it over while on a voyage
through endless waters, cumbersome,
an eternity to get through.
You are in Cartagena. And he is in Virginia.
You and him face-time, looking into screens,
to see if you’ve both aged, to see why
you both no longer smile at sarcasm and punchlines.
You look for jobs on your laptop,
while piano melodies flutter in the background,
nothing coming up in your search,
worth wasting time for. You read books
by Viet Thanh Ngyuen, talk to strangers in bars,
and sleep in until noon in a plush bed built
from hands you’ve never touched.
The clock, ticking on the wall,
a heart still beating under a cage of ribs,
and you don’t want to step foot
on a cold floor where dust refuses to collect,
a path laid out to the balcony
where you stand over the railing,
a dream in your muddied mind, a hangover
perhaps, a change in mood,
a wrist being bent, in an angle
that is in the direction of a journey
you will never take without a hand,
a guide, a push to get you going.
You take a photograph with your phone
of the place where Gabo used to sit and eat,
and drink and write. And you tell yourself,
“What a pretty desk, look how it stands upright.”

During the first six months of 1967, while McCain was part of an attack squadron of A-4 Skyhawks on the carrier Oriskany in the South China Sea, North Vietnamese officials said some 167 schools were bombed, along with 230 churches, three seminaries, and 23 pagodas. In late September—just a month before McCain’s crash on his 23rd bombing run—U.S. planes managed to drop four massive container bombs (2,400 pellet bombs apiece) on a grade school in Thanh Hoa province, south of Hanoi. The school had just reopened after the summer recess and, according to Vietnamese reports, the attack killed 33 pupils, ages 8 to 12. Thirty more were wounded, including two teachers. That was a single incident. The American estimate is that the 1965-68 bombing campaign killed between 52,000 and 182,000 civilians; the Vietnamese claim the figure was several times higher.

Some yesterdays ago I wore wool socks
you blocked your memory of her from your list of setbacks
I played hooky with better judgement
Sitting in class was counting the colors in your eyes
To your surprise I found 3

Bells of a church rang through the halls
and we ran to the library stacks
with furrowed brows and uptight glances
I tasted your soul and you tasted mine,
a flavorful pantomime on that tried thursday

There was Easy Street, Thanh Brothers, the Central Library
none as captivating as that escalating moment at the waterfront
breathing deep a salty breeze, and your old spice cologne in the hair you tease
We had moments

Bringing you home, we abhor being alone
your tears never ceased flowing
im growing with pain,
feeling burnt from your flame,

don't dare touch it to your temples any more

when  this all began, I contemplated whether or not I would let you completely in,
being that I haven't changed the answer was predetermined,
but for a little while I rolled the thought on my tongue.
asking,
Will she like me even through the stains?