Our Return
Our tour is over; but not everyone gets to come home; others
continue to march open column dispersed through unforgiving terrain,
continue to convoy down hostile roads,
continue to survive captive in the enemy’s prison,
continue to breathe the foreign oxygen full of dust and sand, or jungle
moisture and humidity, or the icy air freezing your insides as it hits
your lungs.
With mixed emotions, worrying for those still in the fray yet frantic
and grateful for a taste of home, we ascend the gangway to the ship with
heavy hearts, we board the ramp of the behemoth aircraft with
anticipation, that it will take us safely across the wide, blue expanse
to the shores of our origin.
Our arrival, the pivotal entrance to the homeland we fought for, is met
with a myriad of reactions. Some are greeted with pomp and circumstance,
official celebrations for their triumphant conquest, grand ceremonies of
victory and pride, parades provided by a cheering society, family and
loved ones welcoming them home with open arms.
Others are hailed with vile contempt, formal protests for their
warmongering invasion, striking resistance of arrogance and defeat,
processions of a confrontational public who spurn them with open
hostility, disrespectful insults, and spit in their faces.
An unfortunate few are received with nothing but a lonesome walk to the
bus station, significant others or family long gone or moved on having
been deprived of their presence, broken relationships and shattered
homes, an emptier and hollow world, alone without their brothers
fighting by their side.
Our return, our swan song of jubilant survival against odds often
stacked against us, can quickly convert from a familial, personal
festivity to a forlorn period of emptiness and desensitization. We miss
the camaraderie of battle, desire for the safety of our brothers and
sisters, and hunt newspapers and correspondence daily for information
and names of those lost since we departed. Our bodies and minds primed
for conflict every second, every day create acrimonious voids in the
mundane routines of daily life.
We continue to think as though we are still fighting,
continue to keep watchful eyes on exits and strangers,
continue to stare into the distance while lost in thought,
continue to startle at innocuous booming sounds,
continue to crave the high that comes from primal battle.
For in our return, our battle is over; but the war is far from won.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Silence
Without sound, the complete absence of noise, deficient vibrations in
the ear drum; silence is a sea of glass unbroken by waves, the secrecy
of stringent protocols for high-level government projects, the emptiness
of deep space as we journey through the cosmos. It can be applied in a
moment, showing respect for the departed with bowed head and no motion.
Silence is craved, people yearn for the abstinence of utterance, covet
the muteness to ease their stress and release their tensions.
But the nature and scope of silence cannot be bounded, cannot be
restricted and constrained to these descriptions. To those who sign the
dotted line, swearing life for brother and country, and now move to
defend that promise in a foreign land, silence changes; it deviates from
definition, diverges from designation as an abhorrence to be destroyed,
a loathsome awakening of the monsters in our minds.
To us, silence lacks clarity; silence raises the warning alarm of unease
as we await the coming onslaught, the chaotic anxiety of an unknown
bearing or form of attack, the confused agitation of unidentified
aggression on the battlefield and in your mind. Silence is the
discontinuance of a breeze, a disappearance of the usual creatures and
beasts lurking, the desertion of crowds, the shuttering of windows; a
stillness resounding with the omen that only violence can fulfill.
Silence becomes a persistent ringing, where an increase in silence from
cupped hands over covered ears causes resonance intensification; the
ringing you hear after a blaring concert parallels the ringing after a
piercing gunfight, after the booming explosion, into eternity. Under
tension, it becomes a discordant drumbeat, the plangent leftover from a
resounding chopper ride, stridently thumping with each pump of an
irregular heartbeat. Silence becomes a soundless film, the
unsynchronized recording of horrifying nightmares performing
continuously in the theater of your thoughts.
Silence, both a thunderous rage from a tornadic freight train and a
muffled scream caught in the whispers of the wind. The world sleeps
while we lay and question what weather the silence will spawn tonight;
we long for hurried passage into slumber for the threat of sleeplessness
is relentless before the storm. Lying in bed, reposing in the black
darkness of night, is no choice, no option as we have learned our bodies
must be incessant in task, unceasing in duty to elude the deafening
murmurs of silence.
Your peaceful serenity becomes our pained remembrance, where hell opens
the gates and the smallest rustle reverberates as Death’s raucous
stampede to finally collect with scythe in hand. Your noiseless
tranquility converges with our unsettling condition, where we overlook
our psyche and forget ourselves. You replenish and rejuvenate in the
quiet; we suffer in silence.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Avoidance
My purposeful actions remove the undesirable, avoid the situational,
circumvent the conversational until I am safe, until escape eliminates,
until evasion eradicates and I withdraw into myself. I dive and duck
one-sided dodgeball attacks, diverting from uncomfortable and deflecting
dread and anxiety with maladaptive coping no shrink can break through.
This behavior protects me, from thinking those thoughts, from feeling
those feelings and sanctions the sidestep and skirt around the stressors
and damage of my unexposed trauma.
I elude discussions, eschew topics that expose wounds that never healed,
that bares an injured soul. Tit-for-tat, the back-and-forth match where
they serve their questions and I swing to change subjects, they volley
their dialogue and I spike my lacking will with bypassing finality. My
cornered conscious counts exits, purposely parks facing the ingress and
nearest the exodus to shake the onslaught, avert the ambush on my weary
humanity that carries this burden. My preventive tactics defend my
barricade from television dramatics and movie theatrics, preserve my
blockade constructed of tortured outlooks and pained remembrance from
these scenes that rehash an epoch best forgotten. I will not tolerate,
will not submit and abide to the possibility of reexperience, the
prospect of reliving the haunting of my dreams; avoidance is my
acquaintance, my associate who preserves my peace.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
The Screams I Hear
The screams arrive periodically, returning from the depths of memory
from time to time as aggrieved remembrance, an unsettling commemoration
to a night best forgotten. Despite a craving for elapsed years to
suppress visions and dull the volume, haunting and piercing, the screams
wake me from slumber; not the soft wailing or pitched bawling of an
infant that rouse the resting mother, rather the earsplitting and
unforgettable shrieks of the wounded soldier from the battlefield.
This boy, no older than 19, remains screeching in my sleeping
reminiscence. His boyish face pinched tight in agony, his strong hand
intensely clasping mine in pained anguish, his torso and lower
extremities firmly strapped to the stretcher and draped with a thin,
blood-soaked blanket to avoid flailing and the spectacle of his missing
limb; these images and sensations stagnate in my ruminating nightmare.
One hand in his, the other holding the stretcher, we leap from the truck
and rush him to the waiting medical chopper. Every clumsy trip or hard
footfall of any of the foursome of bearers brings blood-curdling yells
of suffering. Once at the door, the medic has to tear his grip from my
hand to get him emplaced, bumping him against partitions and floor that
brings forth roars of distraught contention. As the door closes, I hear
over swirling wind his final distressed screams and the chopper lifts
away.
I’m awake; although my room is silent and tranquil, lingering cries
continue to ring in my ears like a shrill whistle won from the fair in
my youth. I picture his tense expression and feel his handhold slip away
as my mind draws a portrait of the rising helicopter. I yearn for rest,
sleep without nightmares, slumber without these manifestations attacking
my mind and soul; but I know, eventually, my thoughts will again recall
the screams.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Our tour is over; but not everyone gets to come home; others
continue to march open column dispersed through unforgiving terrain,
continue to convoy down hostile roads,
continue to survive captive in the enemy’s prison,
continue to breathe the foreign oxygen full of dust and sand, or jungle
moisture and humidity, or the icy air freezing your insides as it hits
your lungs.
With mixed emotions, worrying for those still in the fray yet frantic
and grateful for a taste of home, we ascend the gangway to the ship with
heavy hearts, we board the ramp of the behemoth aircraft with
anticipation, that it will take us safely across the wide, blue expanse
to the shores of our origin.
Our arrival, the pivotal entrance to the homeland we fought for, is met
with a myriad of reactions. Some are greeted with pomp and circumstance,
official celebrations for their triumphant conquest, grand ceremonies of
victory and pride, parades provided by a cheering society, family and
loved ones welcoming them home with open arms.
Others are hailed with vile contempt, formal protests for their
warmongering invasion, striking resistance of arrogance and defeat,
processions of a confrontational public who spurn them with open
hostility, disrespectful insults, and spit in their faces.
An unfortunate few are received with nothing but a lonesome walk to the
bus station, significant others or family long gone or moved on having
been deprived of their presence, broken relationships and shattered
homes, an emptier and hollow world, alone without their brothers
fighting by their side.
Our return, our swan song of jubilant survival against odds often
stacked against us, can quickly convert from a familial, personal
festivity to a forlorn period of emptiness and desensitization. We miss
the camaraderie of battle, desire for the safety of our brothers and
sisters, and hunt newspapers and correspondence daily for information
and names of those lost since we departed. Our bodies and minds primed
for conflict every second, every day create acrimonious voids in the
mundane routines of daily life.
We continue to think as though we are still fighting,
continue to keep watchful eyes on exits and strangers,
continue to stare into the distance while lost in thought,
continue to startle at innocuous booming sounds,
continue to crave the high that comes from primal battle.
For in our return, our battle is over; but the war is far from won.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Silence
Without sound, the complete absence of noise, deficient vibrations in
the ear drum; silence is a sea of glass unbroken by waves, the secrecy
of stringent protocols for high-level government projects, the emptiness
of deep space as we journey through the cosmos. It can be applied in a
moment, showing respect for the departed with bowed head and no motion.
Silence is craved, people yearn for the abstinence of utterance, covet
the muteness to ease their stress and release their tensions.
But the nature and scope of silence cannot be bounded, cannot be
restricted and constrained to these descriptions. To those who sign the
dotted line, swearing life for brother and country, and now move to
defend that promise in a foreign land, silence changes; it deviates from
definition, diverges from designation as an abhorrence to be destroyed,
a loathsome awakening of the monsters in our minds.
To us, silence lacks clarity; silence raises the warning alarm of unease
as we await the coming onslaught, the chaotic anxiety of an unknown
bearing or form of attack, the confused agitation of unidentified
aggression on the battlefield and in your mind. Silence is the
discontinuance of a breeze, a disappearance of the usual creatures and
beasts lurking, the desertion of crowds, the shuttering of windows; a
stillness resounding with the omen that only violence can fulfill.
Silence becomes a persistent ringing, where an increase in silence from
cupped hands over covered ears causes resonance intensification; the
ringing you hear after a blaring concert parallels the ringing after a
piercing gunfight, after the booming explosion, into eternity. Under
tension, it becomes a discordant drumbeat, the plangent leftover from a
resounding chopper ride, stridently thumping with each pump of an
irregular heartbeat. Silence becomes a soundless film, the
unsynchronized recording of horrifying nightmares performing
continuously in the theater of your thoughts.
Silence, both a thunderous rage from a tornadic freight train and a
muffled scream caught in the whispers of the wind. The world sleeps
while we lay and question what weather the silence will spawn tonight;
we long for hurried passage into slumber for the threat of sleeplessness
is relentless before the storm. Lying in bed, reposing in the black
darkness of night, is no choice, no option as we have learned our bodies
must be incessant in task, unceasing in duty to elude the deafening
murmurs of silence.
Your peaceful serenity becomes our pained remembrance, where hell opens
the gates and the smallest rustle reverberates as Death’s raucous
stampede to finally collect with scythe in hand. Your noiseless
tranquility converges with our unsettling condition, where we overlook
our psyche and forget ourselves. You replenish and rejuvenate in the
quiet; we suffer in silence.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Avoidance
My purposeful actions remove the undesirable, avoid the situational,
circumvent the conversational until I am safe, until escape eliminates,
until evasion eradicates and I withdraw into myself. I dive and duck
one-sided dodgeball attacks, diverting from uncomfortable and deflecting
dread and anxiety with maladaptive coping no shrink can break through.
This behavior protects me, from thinking those thoughts, from feeling
those feelings and sanctions the sidestep and skirt around the stressors
and damage of my unexposed trauma.
I elude discussions, eschew topics that expose wounds that never healed,
that bares an injured soul. Tit-for-tat, the back-and-forth match where
they serve their questions and I swing to change subjects, they volley
their dialogue and I spike my lacking will with bypassing finality. My
cornered conscious counts exits, purposely parks facing the ingress and
nearest the exodus to shake the onslaught, avert the ambush on my weary
humanity that carries this burden. My preventive tactics defend my
barricade from television dramatics and movie theatrics, preserve my
blockade constructed of tortured outlooks and pained remembrance from
these scenes that rehash an epoch best forgotten. I will not tolerate,
will not submit and abide to the possibility of reexperience, the
prospect of reliving the haunting of my dreams; avoidance is my
acquaintance, my associate who preserves my peace.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
The Screams I Hear
The screams arrive periodically, returning from the depths of memory
from time to time as aggrieved remembrance, an unsettling commemoration
to a night best forgotten. Despite a craving for elapsed years to
suppress visions and dull the volume, haunting and piercing, the screams
wake me from slumber; not the soft wailing or pitched bawling of an
infant that rouse the resting mother, rather the earsplitting and
unforgettable shrieks of the wounded soldier from the battlefield.
This boy, no older than 19, remains screeching in my sleeping
reminiscence. His boyish face pinched tight in agony, his strong hand
intensely clasping mine in pained anguish, his torso and lower
extremities firmly strapped to the stretcher and draped with a thin,
blood-soaked blanket to avoid flailing and the spectacle of his missing
limb; these images and sensations stagnate in my ruminating nightmare.
One hand in his, the other holding the stretcher, we leap from the truck
and rush him to the waiting medical chopper. Every clumsy trip or hard
footfall of any of the foursome of bearers brings blood-curdling yells
of suffering. Once at the door, the medic has to tear his grip from my
hand to get him emplaced, bumping him against partitions and floor that
brings forth roars of distraught contention. As the door closes, I hear
over swirling wind his final distressed screams and the chopper lifts
away.
I’m awake; although my room is silent and tranquil, lingering cries
continue to ring in my ears like a shrill whistle won from the fair in
my youth. I picture his tense expression and feel his handhold slip away
as my mind draws a portrait of the rising helicopter. I yearn for rest,
sleep without nightmares, slumber without these manifestations attacking
my mind and soul; but I know, eventually, my thoughts will again recall
the screams.
by Contributing Poet Chris Barnes Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Bio: Chris Barnes served in the United States Air Force for nearly 20 years
& is beginning the journey into a life beyond his military service.
From his multiple combat deployments,
Chris suffers from moderate Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),
and his continuing treatments have led him to write about his experiences.
Outside of work, Chris spends his time creating memories with his wife and daughter,
and their German shepherd, Bane.
& is beginning the journey into a life beyond his military service.
From his multiple combat deployments,
Chris suffers from moderate Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),
and his continuing treatments have led him to write about his experiences.
Outside of work, Chris spends his time creating memories with his wife and daughter,
and their German shepherd, Bane.
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