LZ Some Hill Somewhere
It became no shock
To discover the floor of the earth
Deeper than it appeared
On the ass end of a shit hook
Its crew chief barking at us
As we fell
Like a green excretion
From the whup-whup hover
Bird droppings
If you will
Our ballsy salted squad leader
Stood there
Still in a rainy red smoke mist
Calmly looking down upon us
. . . a welcome back
To the cryptic contact message
In his borrowed from Lee Marvin eyes
Below
Our sane hearts pumped
A reality of ripples
Into the ruby infusion
Of rainwater and blood
Down there
In that bombed-out
Bowl of butchered meat in the mud
The scattered deaf mute carnage
Some of our brothers and some of them
Cartilage and tendon ribbons
End over ended
With splintered bone
Lying there
Listening to the chattering swill
A cook-off of brass belts feeding
The white hot
Sludge-muffled maws
Snorting hogs ... there in the torpor
And the tumble of Kalashnikovs
And B-40s performing
A perfectly deadly medley
Of hair-raising melodies
And again
I called on those
Almighty powers that be
While the senior squid
Worked on this kid
Whose red marimba of a ribcage opened
For all the gods to see
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2013
VWP 2015 First published in Blue Streak by University of Eastern Kentucky 2013
Hue City Snap
O that vile little war
We partook of
No one would await
Our ticker-tapeless returns
Our festive sky the color tar
. . . I saw a boy
I'd played pony league with
Eating rats in the rubble
With his fire team
. . . On a morning
When urine escaped me in my fear
As nearby
Phantoms dropped their canisters
Of jellied death
On the Imperial Palace of Peace
. . . And the ill-fated for sacrifice
Two battalions of the 5th Marines
Who'd roughly lose
One hundred and thirty lives
Many of whom
Still in their teens
Abandoned their wills to survive
The shock of wounds received
. . . Running a teargas gauntlet
Room by gutted room
Louvres chattering in French motif
Street by colonial street
Dynasties of the long-dead souls exhumed
Set loose amid the littered impediments
Of dead educators
And the religious elite
Buddhists bound and wrapped-up tight
Expanding in strands of com-wire
Alongside their . . . torn
Adorned in festive ao dai wives
. . . Some of them
Later buried alive
Or half afloat
In an ancient moat before the Citadel
And below
The royal amorphous heap
Once the Dong Ba Tower
. . . Under the heavens
We thought we knew
Those soft pale colors that betrayed us
In the dry bloody fudge
Of afternoon
. . . And when
In that urban jungle specters grew
Beneath the evening river's flare of moon
Palms did pirouettes -
Shadows pitching on the Perfume tide
A writhing rhythm
Of silhouettes
Fashioned to fool a young blood's eye
. . . And all the while
Above that city's
Blazing sacred stench
Inexplicably consumed
Beguiled
By the unaccustomed fragrance
Of all things Annamese
Thunder stricken on some of those
Monsoon zephyrs out of the northeast
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Consequence Magazine #6 Spring 2014
Extrication
We found relief from the utter fatigue
In the simple luxury, collapsed on beds
Of trampled elephant grass
There in the beat-down of bamboo, machetes thwacking
Hacking away at a would-be LZ
Removing debris from a muggy highland narrow
Where tactile horseflies
Stood paralyzed in the heat of the stocks and barrels
Quiet rifles cradled beneath the angry
Tropical bloodshot eye of the sun
Our replenished packs
Propped our slimy, skinny scarecrow backs
Muscular but malnourished
Leather necks throbbing
Under the slight constriction
Of faded, degraded G.I.
Green towel horseshoe ringers,
Sopping up, mopping up a drainage
Of teenage sweat
Dangling from earlobes and loose straps
On the steel pots that rocked
Atop our precious brain containers,
Cammy tubs that were covered and tagged
With the countercultural symbols of insurrection
Homespun macho maxims
And the names of females
With blacked-out days
Eclipsed by an ace of spades
Ubiquitous on calendars of war like jail
And we lingered and we languished
In the staggered supine columns
Lounged there with cocktails of pear juice
Pastries of pound cake
Trying our hands in those moments
At staving-off the oppressive weights
Of humidity and apprehension
With an imperative of detached reverie.
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
We Heads Shared in the Loss of Icons
We heads
Shared in the loss of icons
A Kennedy
A King
We heads
Could hang our heads together
Through damn-near anything
All we really wanted to do
Was trip
All of us relatively new
To the tripping bestowed upon us
This weed-smoking
Serendipitous milieu
A la Hendrix for blending
Blood together Sixties
Southeast Asia
Really kinda cool that way
Chucks and souls
Could hang together
In a weird sorta
Colorless naivete
Rendering us rather mellow
Not so fucking uptight
Spooning together
Or shoulder-high
In holes some nights
Rain slick . . . hand and face
The beautiful goddamned
Moon play of reflections -
Its bare skin naked pallor
Amid a pity of stars
We heads
Stellar with irrelevance
Shared those righteous bowls
Of ganja in homage
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
A Year of Diplomas & Wounds Received
My high school English teacher
Required our class of seniors to subscribe
To the Reader's Digest;
Assigned us to read and discuss certain articles,
One of which, ironically depicted
The plight of the 26th Marines,
Their battles with the NVA
For control of what would be
Christened a legendary hill one day . . .
The irony - that approximately one year later,
In May of Sixty-eight,
I would be deployed with my company
And another from the 1st MarDiv
To relieve the 26th
Who controlled that remote,
Albeit, strategically essential, position
In the northern highlands of South Vietnam.
This transition for me
Was a very eerie reminder
As to how rapidly one's life
Can morph and factor
Into the bizarre and unfathomable;
To how rapidly one reasons
With the mind-boggling randomness
Of this relatively small planet we inhabit.
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
It became no shock
To discover the floor of the earth
Deeper than it appeared
On the ass end of a shit hook
Its crew chief barking at us
As we fell
Like a green excretion
From the whup-whup hover
Bird droppings
If you will
Our ballsy salted squad leader
Stood there
Still in a rainy red smoke mist
Calmly looking down upon us
. . . a welcome back
To the cryptic contact message
In his borrowed from Lee Marvin eyes
Below
Our sane hearts pumped
A reality of ripples
Into the ruby infusion
Of rainwater and blood
Down there
In that bombed-out
Bowl of butchered meat in the mud
The scattered deaf mute carnage
Some of our brothers and some of them
Cartilage and tendon ribbons
End over ended
With splintered bone
Lying there
Listening to the chattering swill
A cook-off of brass belts feeding
The white hot
Sludge-muffled maws
Snorting hogs ... there in the torpor
And the tumble of Kalashnikovs
And B-40s performing
A perfectly deadly medley
Of hair-raising melodies
And again
I called on those
Almighty powers that be
While the senior squid
Worked on this kid
Whose red marimba of a ribcage opened
For all the gods to see
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2013
VWP 2015 First published in Blue Streak by University of Eastern Kentucky 2013
Hue City Snap
O that vile little war
We partook of
No one would await
Our ticker-tapeless returns
Our festive sky the color tar
. . . I saw a boy
I'd played pony league with
Eating rats in the rubble
With his fire team
. . . On a morning
When urine escaped me in my fear
As nearby
Phantoms dropped their canisters
Of jellied death
On the Imperial Palace of Peace
. . . And the ill-fated for sacrifice
Two battalions of the 5th Marines
Who'd roughly lose
One hundred and thirty lives
Many of whom
Still in their teens
Abandoned their wills to survive
The shock of wounds received
. . . Running a teargas gauntlet
Room by gutted room
Louvres chattering in French motif
Street by colonial street
Dynasties of the long-dead souls exhumed
Set loose amid the littered impediments
Of dead educators
And the religious elite
Buddhists bound and wrapped-up tight
Expanding in strands of com-wire
Alongside their . . . torn
Adorned in festive ao dai wives
. . . Some of them
Later buried alive
Or half afloat
In an ancient moat before the Citadel
And below
The royal amorphous heap
Once the Dong Ba Tower
. . . Under the heavens
We thought we knew
Those soft pale colors that betrayed us
In the dry bloody fudge
Of afternoon
. . . And when
In that urban jungle specters grew
Beneath the evening river's flare of moon
Palms did pirouettes -
Shadows pitching on the Perfume tide
A writhing rhythm
Of silhouettes
Fashioned to fool a young blood's eye
. . . And all the while
Above that city's
Blazing sacred stench
Inexplicably consumed
Beguiled
By the unaccustomed fragrance
Of all things Annamese
Thunder stricken on some of those
Monsoon zephyrs out of the northeast
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Consequence Magazine #6 Spring 2014
Extrication
We found relief from the utter fatigue
In the simple luxury, collapsed on beds
Of trampled elephant grass
There in the beat-down of bamboo, machetes thwacking
Hacking away at a would-be LZ
Removing debris from a muggy highland narrow
Where tactile horseflies
Stood paralyzed in the heat of the stocks and barrels
Quiet rifles cradled beneath the angry
Tropical bloodshot eye of the sun
Our replenished packs
Propped our slimy, skinny scarecrow backs
Muscular but malnourished
Leather necks throbbing
Under the slight constriction
Of faded, degraded G.I.
Green towel horseshoe ringers,
Sopping up, mopping up a drainage
Of teenage sweat
Dangling from earlobes and loose straps
On the steel pots that rocked
Atop our precious brain containers,
Cammy tubs that were covered and tagged
With the countercultural symbols of insurrection
Homespun macho maxims
And the names of females
With blacked-out days
Eclipsed by an ace of spades
Ubiquitous on calendars of war like jail
And we lingered and we languished
In the staggered supine columns
Lounged there with cocktails of pear juice
Pastries of pound cake
Trying our hands in those moments
At staving-off the oppressive weights
Of humidity and apprehension
With an imperative of detached reverie.
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
We Heads Shared in the Loss of Icons
We heads
Shared in the loss of icons
A Kennedy
A King
We heads
Could hang our heads together
Through damn-near anything
All we really wanted to do
Was trip
All of us relatively new
To the tripping bestowed upon us
This weed-smoking
Serendipitous milieu
A la Hendrix for blending
Blood together Sixties
Southeast Asia
Really kinda cool that way
Chucks and souls
Could hang together
In a weird sorta
Colorless naivete
Rendering us rather mellow
Not so fucking uptight
Spooning together
Or shoulder-high
In holes some nights
Rain slick . . . hand and face
The beautiful goddamned
Moon play of reflections -
Its bare skin naked pallor
Amid a pity of stars
We heads
Stellar with irrelevance
Shared those righteous bowls
Of ganja in homage
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
A Year of Diplomas & Wounds Received
My high school English teacher
Required our class of seniors to subscribe
To the Reader's Digest;
Assigned us to read and discuss certain articles,
One of which, ironically depicted
The plight of the 26th Marines,
Their battles with the NVA
For control of what would be
Christened a legendary hill one day . . .
The irony - that approximately one year later,
In May of Sixty-eight,
I would be deployed with my company
And another from the 1st MarDiv
To relieve the 26th
Who controlled that remote,
Albeit, strategically essential, position
In the northern highlands of South Vietnam.
This transition for me
Was a very eerie reminder
As to how rapidly one's life
Can morph and factor
Into the bizarre and unfathomable;
To how rapidly one reasons
With the mind-boggling randomness
Of this relatively small planet we inhabit.
by Contributing Poet Fred Rosenblum Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Bio: Fred Rosenblum served with the 1st Marines in ‘68/’69 Vietnam,
fueling most of what has appeared in a smattering of publications.
His first book of poems, Hollow Tin Jingles, was released in February of 2014.
He is retired and residing with wife wife of 42 years in San Diego, CA.
fueling most of what has appeared in a smattering of publications.
His first book of poems, Hollow Tin Jingles, was released in February of 2014.
He is retired and residing with wife wife of 42 years in San Diego, CA.
Except where otherwise attributed, all pages & content herein
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Westerly, Rhode Island, USA