Vietnam

 Vietnam

Remembering

Soul, soaked in scream,
I never sang.
I unknew loving.

I killed a yellow man.
(Pounding him with the first, the second,
The thousandth bullet of my duty.)
Part me was in his shroud of dying flesh.

Memory (now)
Is not the calendar of the evening news.
It is the every breathing act.

Healing

My child knows me only as seed.
And what can I share in stories
Soaked in blood, and scattered flesh,
And all the things I came to do?

Who hurts with me?
Holding tight against the rage
From every fragment of cell
And self.

Look at me
Wearing shame and rage
And all the other medals
Of the rituals of that code.

So I hold tight to my pain,
Not dilution, not sacrament,
Reconciled to the always-will-be-ness of it.
Accepting in a solitary, daylight act,
I end-begin.