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VIETNAM  WAR  POETRY
​
Philip bartram

Night Watch


When all things lie still,
I descend slowly,
With a grip tightly in place
Over the whole of wooden rungs,
Each hand releasing blood
Back to my arms. Moving
 
Now over uncertain ground,
In a ritualistic dance
With the nearly obscured moon
Swung over my shoulder,
I stand where I had stood before,
And might stand again tonight.
 
Kowtowing beneath the olive-drab
Tank, my head submerged
In the flow of water, I wait for the
Magical dust in my eyelids to rinse,
My brain to snap into action,
So I could rise screaming
For a new breath.
 
I climb back over each rung
To a watchtower not seen from the ground,
High enough that all giddiness
Would return in warped madness
If only I looked down.
 
Momentarily, I am a renewed warrior,
Reinvigorated by water,
Striding with shoulders thrown back,
Like a cadet keen on the hype
In his first parade.
 
Yet, I know as if seeing that
Charlie squats in the darkness,
In off-fashion black pajamas,
Preparing to send in a thunderous volley,
On the flashes of red rooster tails,
An apocalyptic intent, for I am the
Target here. And I, having seen the
Rockets spring forth from the plane
Of intangible blackness, would
Counter in quick time.
 
But, a small man in lederhosen,
Smelling of apple strudel is saying,
“Let the soul of your mind go limp.”
To stop the voice, I grab my head
As if it were a skewed helmet,
And scream silent obscenities
That could crack the lining of my skull.
I slap my face and thighs,
And with all internal power,
Discard a young woman’s smile.
As if my finger were a barrel,
I pressed it between the eyes
Of the small man, but he is only amused.
 
I return from that olive-drab tank,
Pacing in the casual air, my eyelids at tilt,
Waiting for Charlie,
And doing all things possible
To stay awake in this endless night.
 
Oh sweet goodness!
The last of moonlight falls like stale debris,
And the whole of morning begins
With the cock’s first song.
I retreat quickly from Jacob’s ladder,
Through aromas of fried food and coffee,
Enter the sandbag reinforced hooch,
And fall upon the semi-hard bunk
And SLEEP!


by Contributing Poet  Philip Bartram   Copyright © 2025
VWP 2025    First published in  VietnamWarPoetry.com 
​
​


On Cigar Island

In Quang Nam Province (1969)

 
I walk in a mausoleum
of trees. Insects run in
cold bare feet over my
 
white figurine bones.
My tracks are words,
words nobody will hear.
 
I have discovered coldness.
It is a card index of my
pending life sweeping
 
like a winter’s wind down
from the high country,
charging on invisible legs,
 
coming like so much madness,
coming to smother the candle
I carry on my tongue,
 
sealing me inside this corridor
of trees. My linen shroud a
canton blue, and in continuum,
 
I will search and destroy no more
along the eerie paths and trails
of this South China Sea shore.
 

by Contributing Poet  Philip Bartram   Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023   A version of this poem was published as
 “Date” in Et Cetera, spring 1974.



On the Street Without Joy
​
In Quang Tri Province, Viet Nam (1968) 


The plane circled  
Like a silver-winged horse 
Prancing in the trappings of a full sky. 
The engines coughed and snorted 
Blue, orange, and white mists, each  
Caught on the vortex of the wind  
Then settled upon the waters, leaves  
And grasses.  

Beyond the pagoda where the road  
Forked a black water buffalo lowered  
Its head and charged into the dunes. 
Graves on both sides of the road 
Opened and skeletons sat and waved. 
Some held signs, 
“No soliciting,” and “See you soon.” 
We smiled and waved back. 
Curtis snapped the safety off  
And flicked a half-smoked Pall Mall 
Into the sand. 

In the just cracking afternoon sun, we  
Moved in our rising stamped-out steam, 
Hardcore, swamp fox and grunt, into 
The village. I daydreamt of carrying the 
Homecoming queen to the most secluded 
Rock-laden shore of Maine where she would 
Balance with delight the whole of my body.  
The village shared nothing if not 
Pots of unattended rice and a few 
Chickens that willingly laid their necks 
Across a fallen log, and calmly waited 
The quick motion of the axe. 

She lay in that familiar position, 
A blast-toned mannequin staring infinitely 
Into the sun, blown back from the tunnel that 
Ran beneath a stove’s stone hearth to fields  
And woods. Perhaps in her life she had 
Buried the Bouncing Betties on the paths  
To the village or dipped the punji sticks  
In cobra venom. Perhaps she had envisioned  
Mortality, discarded her scandals and folded her  
Clothes to one side. Perhaps she had touched 
Her thighs and breasts, hoping to be held 
One last time in that position, then rose  
Caught a breath and fell back into that  
Mass of acrid gas released from above,  
Coughed and screamed to be heard.  

The hunched figures that toiled  
In the trench-foot paddies suddenly 
Disappeared. In rapid succession,  
I heard the dull thumps of metal leaving  
The tubes. In a few warped seconds, 
The lung-sacked air that sustained me, 
In quick release, cooled my skin to blue. 
The coal-forged bombs, carried on the spine- 
Cracked backs of peasants over hundreds  
Of miles from the Chinese border, ripped  
The whole of air and white Caucasian flesh. 
Curtis fell first, still conscious, found the  
Stone courage to curse the one time hit.  
“Doc” Phillips, knowing only the dust’s off-color,  
Bend by his own silhouette in an obtuse light, 
Zigzagged to each wounded soldier, a bona fide 
Sawbones with a magical black satchel floating 
With each just above the ground in their shared 
Boyhood fantasies, and did his utmost to stop 
The bodies being released to earth.   

Quickly from inaction, the strength of our 
Motion lay outward from the center of  
The village. My finger in tight pull, my  
Cheek welded against the black stock, 
I joined the grand cacophony, swung the  
M16 in a slow ever increasing arc and  
Danced on the rim of hell. With my  
Helmet just out of reach, I squinched  
Expecting that single well-directed bullet, 
Fired from a hidden spider-hole; obeying 
The physics of force and free fall, to smack  
Into my head. 

Throughout the night, Doc crawled  
Below the green tracers to clip the dog 
Tag from the bootlace of each dead soldier. 
A stealthy cat bound effortlessly  
Closer then stopped and sobbed. 
Ghosts of French legionnaires 
Escorted each fallen soldier in turn back 
To the graveyard, back to the junkyard 
Of the dead. Each laid without that  
Strange ritual of flowers, psalms, and dirt. 

Puff the Magic Dragon frolicked  
Above dropping red ribbons that waved  
Gently back and forth as they reached 
The ground. I felt I could hoist Curtis  
On my back and climb one of those ribbons,  
Hand over hand, and deliver him into the  
Belly of the dragon, then slide down,  
Thousands of feet, chest overinflated, mouth  
Full of obscenities, hair and rifle ablaze,  
Riding the full eight seconds. 

The hunched figures out of half-sleep, 
Out of the shy half-moon rescinding, 
Returned to the paddies. In the redundant  
Whop, whop, of the Slick’s blades, Curtis,  
Propped against a wall, still giddy on the full 
Hit of morphine, smiled and lit a Pall Mall. 
The village gave us an essence, and we, 
At least for a brief time, returned it. And  
Then the absurdity continued except for the  
Dead. I walked straight into the cool stream  
Nearby, an ancient wanderer returning to 
The sea, and washed away the blood, the mud 
And sand, the god-awful odor of fish heads and 
Rice, and whatever else remained of yesterday.  

Somewhere, the stealthy cat backed quietly 
Into his lair contented on devouring the bloody 
Heart of the water buffalo. 


by Contributing Poet  Philip Bartram   Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023     First published in  VietnamWarPoetry.com


 
The Messenger 
(Published in Stone Country, October 1982)
 
We are punching holes in the night’s air 
Like the fourth of July, 
And for an instant, 
I am an elephant passing through the eye  
Of a needle. 
Nothing moves in the blood-washed light, 
But the grass huts backing into darkness 
Where the light ends. 
Beginning to feel the stiffness 
From the advancing graveyard, 
I move slowly 
Under the weight of nylon pack, 
Helmet, and day-old blood 
That life can never reclaim. 
Through the unheld weapons 
Turning to air, 
I slump at the edge of the path 
And stare at the arms 
Thrust wrist-deep in the earth 
In a last effort 
To take life 
From the precious minerals. 
A woman kneels beside me 
And strokes my forehead. 
Slowly, I begin falling 
Beyond all geography, 
Beyond all walls, 
Like a lunar stone, 
Gray as horsemen, 
Gray as sleep, 
Beyond all miseries, my head 
Cradled upon her naked bosom. 
She knows, she knows 
And whispers in my ear 
The Lord’s Prayer 
That stops the fever. 
The weather rinses 
Her potato color to white. 
I love in order to be loved. 
I tell her 
She is beautiful 
And kiss the white gleam 
Of her thighs. 
She is a puppet rising 
From the depths of my desires 
Bringing me rice 
And bits of fish heads. 
It is hot 
And her cool hands 
Sooth my back. 
I am a savage 
Whose face is beard-stained 
Like charred wood 
Of the last village. 
The wind rises like a cornerstone. 
Her last coarse eyelash dissolves 
With my touch. 
I can leave nothing here. 
I can take nothing with me. 
Grass grows woven in the vacuum 
Of rib cages and 
The dead will inherit the face of the earth. 
 

by Contributing Poet  Philip Bartram   Copyright © 2023 
VWP 2023     First published in  Stone Country 1982   
Bio:  Philip Bartram  lives in Bel Air, Maryland. He writes occasionally and has been fortunate to have a few poems published
in several internet blogs: Camel Saloon, Pyrokinection, Stone Country, and Black Poppy Review.
He served in Vietnam (Jun 1968 thru Jun 1969) with the 5th Mechanized Infantry, 1/77 Armor (Quang Tri), and 3/16 Artillery
​attached to the 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment (Tam Ky) as a radio operator/forward observer.    ​
 

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