A Sprinkling of Your Poetry

Home
In This Issue
Notes From The Editor and Board   Reunion 1999   
Short Rounds   Memoirs   In Memoriam

He did not hear them coming,
With the shrieks of death they made,
He was busy on the gun.
Sending out his own fusillade.

The last thing he remembered
Was sailing high up off the ground,
Landing face up with eyes wide open,
He couldn't hear or make a sound.

As he lay there bleeding,
He wanted very much to say
"Please Lord, I'm too young to die this way."
He passed on, Bled his Life out,

ON THE KHE SANH'S BLOOD RED CLAY,

Some chose.

They knew by instinct, had know always
that they would, no, must accept the mission

Some where chosen.

They learned by lesson, by example
to except, try to survive the mission.

Some chose.

First forward, "Hey, I'll go, See you guy's"
"No Problemo." "Piece of cake"

Some weren't chosen.

We need four more, "I'll go next time."
"Man, I'm tired. Let me sleep."

They were ambushed!

Should have been there, could have helped them.
God, why those guy's? Why not me?

Some chose.

And some where chosen. What's the mission?
"I'll go right now! Please choose me!"

Some where chosen.

To survive it, to return and wonder why
And what's their mission.

Tell the story.

Some will choose, Choose not to listen.

Some will choose, They'll chose to hear.

Lance Corporal Martin

 

Bravo Company, One Nine, Fourth of July, '67
By signless Con Thien, ground confounded red.

The air cracked and burned,
The road broached sick for breath
Martin returned to walk the empty trench,
To stare, A hundred lay startled by Eternity.

Solitary, the Parris Island EM Club.
A year after Tet, After Khe Sanh and Hue City,
Martin poured beer on some sloppy Pfc.
Fists and curses, fighting to stand before Iron Mike
In the sticky sweetness of a Carolina night
Mouth brimming blood, Martin howled.


His skin surged in ripples, mad

For the desire to murder the sea.

 

Bill Jayne October 1998

Thousand Yard Stare

(The Siege of Khe Sanh)

Iron falls like rain, day after day of earth slamming,
Bone ripping indifference as I watch one boy
After another being smashed into hash by jagged chunks of death;
Waiting my turn - It's been falling for weeks

Mirror images: red shadows. Filthy, intimate with rats,
Hollow eyes, thousand -yard- stare.
Gaunt beyond terror, no black white or brown,
just sick down to the marrow
Heroes are for myths.

Rockets slam as I run zigzag playing tag
Death trying to escape the unending barrage of
Hatred that leaves meat parts strewn over the land-scape
Without even a "by your leave"

Six Marines huddled close for safety in their own
Coffin dug in red earth, I scramble to get in but come
Up short: one hundred and fifty two millimeters of
Revenge with a debt to pay slams home, all die but me:
All die but me

 

I am running, running, running looking for cover,
Any womb, any hole big enough for an empty shell to
escape from insanity or into insanity of dying, dying,
dying boys
I've finally come home

Joseph Green

Top Side