-Jimmy Sincere
		-11/15/1949-11/22/1968
		-Quang Nam Province, Da Nang, Viet Nam

	That until the color 
	of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color 
	of his eyes…I say WAR…
			-Haile Selassie
			-United Nations General Assembly NYC
			-October 4, 1963 

	“you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.”
							—Tim O'Brien, 

I stepped out back 
to the squeal and bang
of the screen door.

It was a very hot early morning,
still dark,
and out of nowhere,
without warning and at top speed,
the first insect of spring 
performed its aeronautical cataclysm
into my beard.

The sweat of yard work and hangover
suggested to me
images of war.

*

I tried to deflect those thoughts
and file them under insult.

I released the bug 
to the warming breeze.

*

Offshore, weapon-erections threatened us.
If you had been born around 1949,
you would recognize
this kind of posturing-
it has hovered over all of us
our entire lives,
disorganizing our minds.

*

I saw battle-corpses, 
myriads of them,/And the white skeletons of 
young men, I saw them,/I saw the debris and
debris of all the slain soldiers of the war…

Whitman wrote that in 1865.

I thought, It’s remarkable how these memories 
come straight at us, across many, many, many years.

*

Would you have told me about
the flame tree, the jackfruit tree,
the copperpod, the teak,
the coconut palm, the tropical almond?

If you could have told me, would you have?

The more war battered and faded
these beauties, these miracle trees became – 
Indian Milkwood, tamarind,
kapok, papaya, Traveller’s palm,
persimmon, Casuarina tree,
Cannonball tree, 
Dragon Fruit.

*

Jimmy, dearest friend,
when you were killed
with a single shot 
to the back of your eighteen-year-old neck,
your only hiding place had been the dark,
the weak, porous dark that can stop nothing.

Sometimes I imagine you
standing still as possible, 
the black jungle behind you,
sand in front of you
that leads to the Song Han
and onto the 
East Viet Nam Sea in Da Nang-

I imagine you taken in
by the grandeur of nature 
all around you.
The chirps and trills and lisps
of unfamiliar insects and birds,
the perpetual swoosh 
of the river reaching out to the shore,
all bubbles and the clacking of stones,
the wind pushing through ocean grass-
sedge, long blade, wild fox tail.
and there – Suddenly right there! –

—the tree of luck – Cay Quat,
all playing a hymn of comfort
along their delicate reeds.

*

Or was there no thought but one?

The command for silence,
perfect stasis,
silence of the mind
which raises another question-
Were you so profoundly shaken
by a colossal fear
that you were unable to speak?

Each time fear slithered up your back
and into your mind
sending a galaxy of patinas
up and down river
the clearer each atrocity grew. 

*

The moon was busy but cautious,
scattering sapphires and rubies
on the surface of the Song Han-
garnets, tourmalines, peridots, 
sewn all over this
largest river system in central Vietnam,
emptying itself into the
East Viet Nam Sea in Da Nang-
the Song Han River-
“City of the beginning of the sea 
and the end of the river…”

And the moon, conscientious,
continued to spangle the surface
of the sea with topaz, quartz, pearls-
until eventually the luster
of myriad gems nearly blinded you,
inflating you, moving you
closer and closer to
the eminent possibility of death-
filling you with a terror
that came at you,
in its universal language,
a language insisting
that a round would blaze 
through the jungle
and into your neck,
exploding your dreams,
dropping you to the ground,
giving you one last, hasty
look at this exquisite place
that you never had,
an opportunity 
to tell anyone about.

*

O powerful western fallen star!
-what I’ve come for-		
-the debris and debris 
of all the slain soldiers of the war-

 *

Whenever we flay each other
it is always over 
the same gutless idiotic lust 
for blood and land and money,
the authentic human arguments.

In the face of total destruction,
some will still dance the plague,
the manic baile de mani-
-dance for the elders
who are as resilient as the skunk cabbage
stealing silently up through the hoarfrost-

-we will dance for the elders 
until we collapse.

The dark cold crowd,
shoulder to shoulder,
slogs through thick steam rising,	
hot mist stifling the air.			

Some of you will embrace the notion of
striking from the wetlands,
storming the enemy
with full intentions 
of slaughtering each one.

Some of you will actually do it.

*

Thinking those bleak thoughts
about when the sky 
would rain metal and poison,
having expected this our entire lives,
we practiced for it,
	
feeling perfectly safe from harm
hiding under our desks.

Of course, it wasn’t long
before we began to giggle
and whisper loudly-
our voices rang like a hymn,
a broken down, charred hymn,
that scrambled through the muck
of the wetlands-
-the last sound we’d ever hear
above the fiery, blistering of our skin,
was our joyous laughing hearts,
chortled into impending days.
days that might exist
perhaps
sometime in the future.