~ What They Wanted
Was my soul, my body, my mind.
Instead, what they got
Was a declaration to wage war on the war.
In the Nam,
During my relationship
Between being the manipulated
And the manipulator,
I was nothing more
Than U.S. Grade "A" American meat,
Used for some bureaucrat's political gain.
Now, over forty years later,
In this war of no fronts,
An MIA in my own country,
I sleep lightly,
Keep a knife nearby on the night stand,
Continue to go on night patrols,
Look for an alternative revenge.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2004
VWP 2015 First published in Revenge and Forgiveness: An Anthology of Poems
edited by Patrice Vecchione 2004
True Love
She married him a week before he deployed to Vietnam,
On Christmas Day in 1969,
The happiest and saddest occasion in her young life,
A life framed with an unknown future,
Filled with unknown expectations,
Daring beyond the moment,
A kind of hesitant anticipation,
Determined, in the spur of the moment,
To be lived delicately and dangerously.
Loving him since her junior year in high school,
Discovering the epiphany of true love for the first time,
She shared her inner most secrets
With her soul mate girlfriends,
Her monologues a verbal diary.
They envied her, the first of the four
To find the man of their dreams,
A Christian man, a man respected
In their small community,
The quarterback on the varsity team
That led them to a state championship.
He was her universe, her world, her everything.
A year later he came back from Vietnam,
A boy of fifty, deeply scarred and depressed.
For the first week he never touched her,
Never held her, never kissed her.
Never spoke a word to her at all.
Late at night, he hid outside in the tool shed
So she wouldn’t see him cry.
His mood swings unbearable.
Followed by violent, emotional outbursts
That startled her, scared her, spooked her into hiding.
Half the time she didn’t know
If she should fly, freeze or fight.
His insomnia became her jungle terrain,
His PTSD her PTSD.
He slept with a pistol and a knife under his pillow.
His nightmares so intense
She had to sleep in a separate bedroom, fearful for her life.
She confided to her mother he'd been living
Multiple roles since he got back.
That something was terribly wrong.
That his anger was tangible.
So tangible she could smell it. Taste it.
That his rage was dark and foreboding,
Vicious and savage. Cruel.
He embarrassed himself amongst their friends
Until they had no friends.
He withdrew a nightmare at a time
Until he didn’t give a fuck anymore.
He sedated himself, day and night, doing drugs of all kinds,
His drinking destructive.
She could see he was annihilating a part of himself.
But he wouldn't let her in.
She was at a juncture. Should she stay or go.
The wall he had erected
Between them was insurmountable,
A formidable, unconquerable barrier.
One night she came home after a night
Of self-imposed sanctuary with her girlfriends
And found him hanging from a garage rafter,
The noose tight around his neck,
His body lax and loose,
A note near the toppled stool
Saying, It's better this way.
The moment surreal.
His death an emotional time bomb
He had planted in her heart
About to erupt and mushroom.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in Dead Snakes 2015
Stand Off
A disabled Vietnam veteran, legs blown off at the knees from a land mine in III Corp in 1967, checking into a dingy hotel in downtown San Francisco, has traveled over fifteen hundred miles for three days and nights to be near his estranged wife and twenty year old daughter. Inside the bare room, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and dried semen, he feels the gnawing presence of loneliness and depression, the painful gut-wrench of separation, the despondency that has come from being unemployed the past few years. He visualizes his phantoms in group therapy, shouting and sobbing, as he unpacks his personal possessions: a ratty toothbrush, a box of baking soda, a clean flannel shirt, a pair of faded Levis. On this cold winter evening in December, with wind blowing through the cracks and crevices chilling the marrow of his bones, he imagines being asked to discuss his difficulties and problems freely, to come out of silent isolation and accept the truth about himself. Today he doesn't need God; he knows he's lost everything that meant anything to him. All he has left is hope. In his world he pictures a fairy tale reconciliation, a chance to repair the rips and damage in what she called an unpredictable marriage. As he considers this unexpected possibility, he tapes an explosive device to his chest, triggered by a photoelectric cell, which he will activate at daybreak. In a few moments the standoff will begin. Now, he calmly phones the police.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Cherry Boy Comes Home from the Nam
When I came back to the states from Vietnam on 7 February 1968, DEROSing at Oakland Army Terminal, from midnight to six in the morning, I was hoping my entire family would be in Stockton to greet me. Only my mother met me at the bus terminal. Naturally, I was pleased to see her, but I was bitterly disappointed no one else had accompanied her. I didn't have a girlfriend because in basic training she had written me the proverbial Dear John letter. There wasn't a protester or, for that matter, an army recruiter at the terminal either. I had gotten a letter shortly before I left Camp Bearcat forewarning me that a Welcome Home Party was being arranged. I yearned to hear the cheers and yells from my loved ones, feel the pats and slaps on my back, hands grasping hands, lips touching lips, the words "We’re so glad you made it back alive and in one piece" that I dreamt of it for days. I almost forgot the mortar attacks and sniper rounds. I was in a state of short timer's frenzy. I pictured a humongous party on the 4th of February, the date I was supposed to arrive. Like all good signs born under a bad sign, the 68 TET ruined my homecoming. On the fourth of February swarms of Viet Cong endeavored to come through the concertina wire at Long Binh, Ben Hoa. I had already turned in my weapon and the rest of my gear earlier during processing. Their smoldering bodies—fresh from barrage after barrage of Willie Peter rounds—lay contorted, spread eagled, fused to their fate, symbolic of man's ability to efface man from the planet. Was it their death or my own spiritual one that created the indifference I feel now? It's been forty years since the Nam and a little over twenty years since my mother died. Now, a homecoming party that never happened is nothing more than an old memory, a roll of film never developed.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1994
VWP 2015 First published in Nobody Gets Off the Bus:
The Viet Nam Generation Big Book 1994
The Media's Magical Treatment of History
A kid, naïve and innocent, grows up reading Fenimore Cooper's novels, never thinking about the relationship between Natty Bumpo and Indian John. On the radio, in the mountains of Montana, he listens intently to broadcasts of the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Later, as a teenager in California, at the precipice of Manifest Destiny, he reads comic books and discovers Red Ryder and Little Beaver. Never once does he question what these heroes, white and red, might say to one another around the campfire after the sun has set serenely in the West. These champions, of course, have never heard of Plato, Machiavelli, or Coleridge, but neither has he. In his mind, he unquestionably believes in the willing suspension of disbelief. After all, this is the art and craft of fiction, the illustrator's airbrush, the voice-over of authority he has been weaned on. Even though he cannot hear the silence of Natty's laughter, or the father-to-son conversations Red Ryder and Little Beaver have, he has always felt a sense of loyalty and love in Tonto’s words "Kemo Sabe". But it isn't until he is sent to Vietnam in 1967 that he learns cowboy heroism is nothing more than aggression, that the roles of victim and victimizer and the massacred and the massacre have been perversely reversed.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1994
VWP 2015 First published in Nobody Gets Off the Bus:
The Viet Nam Generation Big Book 1994
~
Civil War of the Soul
You keep asking the same question
over and over
to those who will not listen:
If it wasn't a civil war,
then why were we fighting
men, women, and children?
Like Kerouac on the road,
a hobo riding the rails,
a saint in search of the Grail,
you separate reality from fantasy,
select Fellini as your point man,
cross over life's invisible line of demarcation,
and remove your Rosencrantz and Guildenstern doubt.
For years you've looked for Viet Nam
after Viet Nam
in the drugs you took
in the alcohol you consumed
until you saw the lie
for what it was.
Now in your early fifties
you know how lemmings feel
going over the cliff,
know how pigs and cattle feel
when they're led down the chute,
know how young men feel
when they're cannon fodder
in another senseless war.
Left alone like a refugee
forced to choose
between two countries
you stave off sadness
and suicide
wrestle the demons
in this civil war of the soul.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Chills and Fever
Benny Mays and I were fed up with jungle warfare and our tour in Vietnam. So Benny, a young black man from Watts, refused to go on a night patrol. He'd had a vision, warning him tonight's combat assault would not be a bargain of events. The next morning a kangaroo court was held. A rear echelon officer addressed the jury. We have not been training Barbie dolls to kill Viet Cong, he screamed. This soldier disobeyed an order. The lieutenant assumed the air of a mythical god, delighting in a perverse passion for justice, and delivered his Pied Piper offering like the last of the true believers. His voice echoed throughout the courtroom as if each word was a blow from the axe wielder. Benny, suffering chills and fever, sagged to his knees like a sunken fence.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Buddy System
Frank calls today,
Says The Buzzard
Checked out from a drug overdose.
I ask if Tony, Wild Bill Ramirez,
Odom and Nichols know.
That's all that's left of us now.
We congratulate each other
For surviving The Nam, so far.
Who would have guessed
Sutton would die of AIDS two years ago
While directing a production of STRANGE SNOW.
Who would have guessed Max
Would drink himself to death,
Survive three marriages,
Bear a child born without a brain,
Another born with web feet,
Lose more jobs than a company
Downsizing in the middle of the night?
Who would have believed Nate Longley
Would be killed in a freak accident,
A beam giving way
On a high rise 55 stories up?
Turner was predictable.
When he held up that branch
Of Bank of America and was obliterated
By the swat team, we weren't too surprised.
Yeah, Frank says, Life's a goddamn S & D mission.
You come back from getting your ass kicked
in an ambush and years later
You still dwell on the things
That were significant then.
How you would have done the mission differently.
Now forty years later, after normalization,
You go back to Vietnam on company business,
Help establish a capitalistic base
In what once was a communist stronghold.
Frank, I ask, What the hell was that war all about?
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Perimeter
We've filled sandbags all afternoon,
Setting up a perimeter
In a clear and secured area.
A couple hours later,
During a hard monsoon rain,
We're ordered to slit the bloated bags
With bayonets and move camp
300 meters north before night falls.
Wet, exhausted, pissed off,
Some of us slip into slumberland,
Dream of family, friends, freeways.
The rest of us curse
The 5th VC Infantry Division
For not showing up to the party.
Asleep in a Vietnamese graveyard,
Danny calls out for Lan,
His girlfriend, a dancer at the Pagoda Club.
In the half light of the morning,
A couple of us see a black scorpion
Scamper across the wet red dirt,
Plant a perverted hicky on his neck,
A kiss so provocative,
Danny moans for more.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Poets On the Line #9 & 10 The Millenium Issue 2014
Flak Jacket
Sometimes when it was too hot
To wear a shirt
And Major Stiles wasn't around
Handing out Article 15s
Like they were all purpose capsules
Bobby Joe wore his flak jacket
Unzipped,
Flaunted his white belly
And farmer's tan,
Risked the demotion
And loss of pay.
His bro, Stevie R,
Liked to strip to his waist.
Showed off his 18 inch biceps.
Boasted he'd gotten his guns
At Al's Gym in Jersey.
Three Rivers, a Hopi Indian,
Felt like a buffalo hunter
Wrapped in a wool overcoat
During the dead of summer.
He'd sprinkle the ground
With red dirt to cover the red
Of his spirit
In this part of Indian country.
Bobbie Joe, Stevie R, and Three Rivers
Cleaned their M-16s
On top of the track.
Sat cross legged
Like tribal chiefs at a powwow,
Drank warm Kool-Aid from their canteens.
It was so hot and humid
That vest and man bonded
Like peanut butter
Stuck to the roof of your mouth.
Last night
Bobby Joe dreamt
He'd met his wife
In Honolulu on R&R.
Stevie R ranted:
It's him or me,
Kill or be killed.
Said, Ain't this a bitch.
We hunt Charles for weeks
And he don't want no part
Of our shit.
Now, worked up
into a lather
Stevie R slapped a clip
Into his M-16,
Chambered a round,
Flipped off the safety,
And pulled the trigger.
Bobby Joe groaned
Like someone hit him
In the solar plexus.
A crimson spot,
The size of a dime,
Appeared near his open flak jacket
Just above his heart.
He toppled over the side of the track,
Landed face down,
Sprawled and twisted
In the red dirt.
The only man Stevie R
Killed during his tour
In Viet Nam.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2002
VWP 2015 First published in Red River Review 2002
~
Jumping Ship
That morning at chow
rumors float like jettisoned debris.
Psycho Man leaped over the railing
sometime after midnight
on the way to the ship's brig,
handcuffs straining against
blood and bone,
plunging feet first
into the cold, black sea.
Each time one of the MPs
threw him a life preserver
he pushed it away.
For a few minutes
he was in the spotlight,
bobbing up and down
like an unsinkable cork
before being sucked
into the ship's propellers.
That afternoon while searching
in circles for the P Man,
we listen to Hanoi Hannah
on a short-wave receiver.
She knows we're coming,
knows our troop strength,
knows the names of our officers,
predicts how many of us will die
in the coming year.
Later, like derelicts huddled
around a bonfire, we listen to
The Lakers play Philadelphia
from The Sports Arena,
Jerry and Elgin
against Hal and Wilt,
a game we understand.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Liberation
He was there to liberate
the oppressed of South Vietnam.
But when his convoy drove up Highway One
to Camp Bearcat
all he saw were American soldiers
standing or lying by the side of the road,
as if the war zone he had been prepared for
was in another country.
Where’s the war? He asked his friend
sitting next to him.
Stopping at a checkpoint
near a hamlet
his friend pointed to an old woman
staring intensely at them with hatred.
There, he said, In her eyes.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Poets On The Line Vol. 6 [Vietnam work] 2014
Car Wash
That sweltering April summer afternoon
when Ramirez and I take a 5 ton
down to the river
to wash the red dirt
from its banged-up olive drab body.
I leave my M-16 inside the cab
propped against the sandbagged floorboard,
concealed from children
playing in the tepid water nearby.
I enter a crude dwelling
lacking electricity and plumbing,
smell the paraffin odor from a candle stub
on a saucer in the center of the table.
See the hole underneath the bed
surrounding the dirt floor.
A faded photo of Father Ho
tacked upon the wall
of the dimly lit hut
looks down at us.
Together the old ones
pour green tea
into a cracked bowl,
their fingers like frail fans
opening and closing.
I recognize sadness
in the old woman's face,
see my mother
at the airport
for the last time
before flying back to Ft. Riley,
my right arm holding her shoulder
as if she's the child,
her mouth downturned,
her heart broken.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Beneath a Thin Layer of Life
Tet 1968
Incoming mail arrives,
a barrage in the black hours of the night,
messianic visitors from space.
Meteoritic showers of mortar rounds,
defying darkness,
penetrate the perimeter,
malignant in execution.
Our new point man takes a direct hit,
a lob shot,
landing on top of his steel pot.
He vanishes.
At the entrance of a corrugated iron bunker,
a buddy lies frozen in the fetal position.
Beneath a thin layer of life,
he ruminates about the progeny of permanence,
as Viet Cong,
overseeing death and destruction,
infiltrate the landscape like ghosts.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
G.I. Party
For D.M. ( Vietnam veteran - committed suicide 1984 )
Today you reached retirement
with a disturbed and primal conscience.
Two 12 gauge Remington shotgun shells
saturated the field of ice
that separated body count
from catatonic commitment.
Drunk and stoned,
down in your worst moment,
you subpoenaed yourself
into believing
the mission
was more important
than the man.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1994
VWP 2015 First published in Nobody Gets Off the Bus:
The Viet Nam Generation Big Book 1994
~
Draft Notice
3 May 1966
Late afternoon. Friday.
Sacramento simmers in hundred degree heat.
Mom greets me, grim news in her voice,
a sorrow I'd heard a couple months before
at my father's funeral: the somber sadness
from which she'd never recovered.
For those fleeting mercurial moments
between life and beyond,
I'd held dad in my arms,
heard his death rattle,
a staccato low-pitched gurgling sound,
rode in the ambulance,
called a Catholic priest,
dealt with the nightmare.
I hear the faint sound
of war drums beating,
imagine my mother sobbing
beside her son's coffin.
The fire and smoke of my life
rise higher and higher.
My fate, a booby trap, detonates,
destroys what's left of my fragile world.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Hometown Hero
Like a hometown hero from the heartland,
a poor black from the projects,
a son expected to emulate his father,
I'm drafted, wander off to war,
told to kill for an idea,
to kill a Commie for Christ.
My coworkers at the aircraft plant,
both World War II and Korean veterans,
agree it's my patriotic duty, right or wrong,
to defend the flag, motherhood, the American Way.
It's understood we must bomb
North Vietnam back to the Stone Age.
That I must do my job, fight like a man
in this Theatre of the Absurd.
I'm ordered to wage cruel war
on my own species in a country
that has never known peace.
Sheep like, I never question my role.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Weapons Cache
We've traveled on a bus
from the Oakland Army Induction Center
to Fort Ord.
After piling off,
a corporal, wearing starched fatigues,
spit-shined brogans, and a helmet liner,
orders us to form five lines of ten men each,
to stand at attention,
to not move a muscle or make a sound.
He barks out commands
to dump our overnight bags
onto the ground,
to put any weapons we have
in the plastic buckets
being passed like collection plates.
From the back row
I see guys toss stilettos,
Saturday night specials,
brass knuckles, blackjacks,
ice picks, and other paraphernalia
into the wire handled canisters.
I hear metal strike metal,
harsh discordant sounds
that grow heavier and heavier
as the bucket comes closer.
Only the guy next to me
sees my contribution
thrown into the brim-filled five gallon container,
a tiny penknife dad
gave me as a graduation present
I use occasionally to pare my nails.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Private Numnuts
"Before we can get to a place of peace, we have to touch our suffering - embrace it & hold it."
At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace ( Claude Anshin Thomas )
The Drill Instructor, veins protruding from his neck, yells at a platoon of new recruits to answer post haste. He says, Which is easier to kill? A fly? Or, pointing to a cruit in the first row, private Numnuts over there? With his left hand rolled tightly in a fist, and the other with forefinger extended, he signals to private Numnuts to move front and center. The platoon hears the whirring. The fly trapped inside the D.I.'s hand going bonkers. And, as quick as a gambler moving thimbles in a shell game, he has private Numnuts by the throat. Which is easier to kill? He screams again to the platoon, standing at attention, outside on a very hot Kansas afternoon, sweating bullets in their skivvies. The fly or Numnuts? Paralyzed with fear, they are speechless, their mouths open, forming perfect round O's. Numnuts! he yells. Goddammit! It's Numnuts! The D.I. squeezes tighter and tighter until private Numnut's eyes pop from their sockets. Now, speaking softly, almost in ecstasy, the D.I. slowly punctuates each word, saying, as innocently as a murderer confessing his sins, Believe me girls, I wouldn't hurt a fly.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Homestead Review 2014
AWOL
Riding from Stockton to Oakland to Ft. Ord,
we reminisce about our high school days,
laugh because we never fit in.
He's from Stockton; I'm from Lodi.
Swear on a pint of sloe gin
we'd dated some of the same girls.
We're unsure what this war is all about,
can't figure out why
we're fighting people halfway around the world.
We're draftees.
At Ft. Ord we talk one more time
before I'm shipped to Fort Riley, Kansas.
Eight months later we meet again in Tay Ninh.
I'm outa here in four months and a wake up, I say.
He confesses this is his first day in Vietnam,
that he went AWOL.
Reveals to me he missed his family, his girl too much.
Informs me the Military Police hunted him,
interrogated his parents, dogged his girlfriend,
cross-examined his former employer.
Finally, after living underground for eight months
he turned himself in.
The army, he says, gave him a choice:
Vietnam or Leavenworth.
Now, nearly three decades later
I recall the day we met in Tay Ninh for the last time,
puffs of smoke appearing and disappearing
on the Black Virgin Mountain behind us
like phantoms in tulle fog.
Hear him confess to me, venom in his voice,
that this war is a curse that will follow us to our graves.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
Local Board No. 32
For years now I've longed for
The executive secretary, the principle clerk,
To understand that her decisions
were the reasons why twelve men
From my hometown died in Viet Nam.
That Congress had not formally declared war,
That there was no clear and present danger,
That there was no need to impose a draft
That I need her to explain to me
Why I was drafted when others were not.
That her signature on my induction notice
Was like a death warrant.
Old matriarch and executioner,
You could have been anybody's mother or grandmother,
And I wondered then, as I do now,
How many of your sons and grandsons got drafted.
How many died in the red dirt and monsoon mud of Viet Nam.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Dead Snakes 2014
Candyasses
During basic training,
Fort Riley, Kansas,
Was the asshole of the earth.
He spent nights
Crying in the latrine, beaten down,
Whimpering, mewling,
The other recruits
Thought he would wash out
Be on the streets again, a free man.
But when he became a squad leader
In a strac killer platoon
They depended upon him.
Especially the mama's boy,
A shit-bird, whose weapon always jammed
During a fire fight.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Dust Off
A medivac chopper flies
On a slant into a cold LZ
To pick up a Lt. Col,
Two Brigade majors
And three wounded grunts.
The dead brass lay
On ponchos
In the pouring rain,
Droplets streaming down
Their freshly shaven faces.
Three WIAs,
Scared and bleeding,
With stomach and leg wounds,
Beg for a ride out,
Pleading for a freedom bird
Like grunts near the end
Of their tour.
Men scramble to load the wounded
While the dust off chopper
Sits shimmying and shaking.
The chopper pilot
Waves them off,
Points to the KIAs,
The index finger of his flight glove
Swaggering like a short-timer’s stick.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Dead Snakes 2014
White Mice
We're in a convoy
stopped at a narrow bridge
while two MPs and a couple
of South Vietnamese Police
argue and gesture. The White Mice
are on one side, the MPs on the other.
I see one of the White Mice
motion for a deuce-and-a-half
towing two trailers of ammo,
filled full of mess equipment,
and two cooks, to cross the bridge.
Everything happens in slow motion,
as if it has been orchestrated,
and this is the final take.
The Six-By slides into the rice paddy,
turns over from the weight
of the ammo trailers.
What looks like no more
than two to three feet of water
must seem like an ocean
to those trapped.
The driver emerges
a couple of minutes later,
gasping for breath.
I don't see the cooks.
Disbelief turns to anger.
I curse the White Mice's incompetency.
Two cooks drown in a ditch
while black clad peasant women
in conical straw hats
replant green seedlings.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1996
VWP 2015 First published in Viet Nam Generation: A Journal of Recent History
and Contemporary Culture Volume 7, Numbers 1-2 1996
Droopy Dawg
He sits on his cot sharpening his killing knife,
a Bowie that can easily cut through metal, even steel.
Droopy Dawg, a self-appointed mercenary from Charlie Company,
takes money for patrols.
He barks in a slow southern accent
that he kills gooks for a price.
He's an expert with an M-79 Grenade Launcher.
Tonight at Camp Bearcat, before we go out tomorrow morning,
many of us are getting stoned, getting juiced,
getting totally ripped.
It is 1967 and this shit is no longer fun.
Too many of us are ending up in THE STARS AND STRIPES,
KIAs dead and going home!
Droopy volunteers to take a ride with the LRRPs
on their tracks into the bush.
He's got over $1500 on him stashed in a money belt
he had specially made in Saigon.
To some of us he's a real up-and-coming entrepreneur,
claims he's going to start his own business
when he gets back to the world.
When the LRRPs come back the next day
I hear Droopy bought the farm, got zapped,
got wasted
that when he got to Graves Registration
all he had on him was an empty wallet,
his girlfriend's picture,
and a debt of death Uncle Sam could never repay.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
The New Enemy
He sits on his cot sharpening his killing knife,
a Bowie that can easily cut through metal, even steel.
Droopy Dawg, a self-appointed mercenary from Charlie Company,
takes money for patrols.
He barks in a slow southern accent
that he kills gooks for a price.
He's an expert with an M-79 Grenade Launcher.
Tonight at Camp Bearcat, before we go out tomorrow morning,
many of us are getting stoned, getting juiced,
getting totally ripped.
It is 1967 and this shit is no longer fun.
Too many of us are ending up in THE STARS AND STRIPES,
KIAs dead and going home!
Droopy volunteers to take a ride with the LRRPs
on their tracks into the bush.
He's got over $1500 on him stashed in a money belt
he had specially made in Saigon.
To some of us he's a real up-and-coming entrepreneur,
claims he's going to start his own business
when he gets back to the world.
When the LRRPs come back the next day
I hear Droopy bought the farm, got zapped,
got wasted
that when he got to Graves Registration
all he had on him was an empty wallet,
his girlfriend's picture,
and a debt of death Uncle Sam could never repay.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Oakland Army Induction Center
Terrified and dazed,
we stand with our toes flat against a yellow line
that separates us from them,
four military doctors in white coats from each branch of the service,
yelling like tough guys for us to bend over and spread our cheeks.
I look to my right and left, seeing young men with both hands
clutching the fleshy part of their face.
They just don't get it.
We're all hemorrhoids here anyway.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
First Love
For over twenty days
you've been topside
on a ship headed for Vietnam.
You're nineteen and naive.
She'd sent you a Dear John Letter
during Basic Training.
Yet you still love her.
In the Fall Semester
she'd asked you out for a date.
Three months later,
after proposing marriage,
you dropped out of school,
got drafted.
At the drive-in that spring,
you kissed her,
named your children.
You look over the side of the ship,
see white water
cutting across the bow
like a cloud being separated
by a strong wind.
You think of her often,
feel like dying,
jumping overboard.
You float farther and farther
from her as if you're being pulled
by a current with a logic of its own.
In her last letter she confessed
she'd found someone else.
Now pinned down under fire,
in the mud and the rain,
you're so close
to the earth you swear
you can smell
the fragrance of her hair,
smell her perfume,
smell the sweet scent
of her sex,
feel her soft skin.
When RPG rounds and mortars
pound your perimeter
you scream hard for your mother.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
After the Fall
When Saigon fell in April 1975 you were in Australia
Waiting for the winning numbers in the Opera House lottery,
Expatriated from your family, from your friends, from your country.
For seven years you self-exiled yourself from the U.S.
Then like a man recently released from prison,
You returned home to California, a foreigner, a newcomer, a visitor.
You enrolled in a community college, took an American history class,
Learned from the past what mistakes will be made again in the future,
Began reading the history of Vietnam, starting with the 1954 Geneva Accords
And The Pentagon Papers. You replaced willful ignorance with critical thinking,
Examined the moral imperatives leading to the war, questioned the unnecessary deaths
Of three to five million brown-skinned people in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Declared you'd never trust the government again, never trust politicians again.
You scorned warmongers and war profiteers. But those you despise the most
Are the pseudo patriots, those who use patriotism to silence criticism against
Those holding them in contempt.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Jimmy Lee
Jimmy Lee jacks up
the front wheel
of Babe The Blue Ox,
my 1964 Buick Le Sabre,
and removes it
like a pit crew mechanic
at the Indy Five Hundred.
Afterwards he chugalugs
another cold Miller Lite
in what must be
record breaking time.
I love him like a brother.
This Irish misfit.
Long red hair
flowing past his shoulder blades
like a Viking war lord.
Before tackling the serious stuff
we've inhaled two 12 packs
while watching the 49ers play
the Rams to a 35-35 tie.
Laughing deeply from lungs
already donated
to Johns Hopkins,
Jimmy Lee tells the clerk
at Safeway
I'm this weeks $1000 winner
in their football contest.
It's five in the afternoon;
a typical sweltering summer sun
blistering the concrete patio floor
of my San Joaquin Valley villa.
Hot enough to fry quesidillas
on the cement.
Jimmy Lee has descended
from the Sierra Nevadas
like a trapper on the take
to fix The Ox,
loving her like
she's his better half.
We're both students
at the local state university,
Vietnam veterans
living on the G.I. Bill.
Jimmy Lee sleeps in a trailer
amongst the pines in thin air.
I rent a cottage that has no heat
or central air in the barrio
on the west side of town.
We're both social pariahs,
a couple of modern day misfits.
We don't care about anyone or anything,
dead men in our own homecoming parade
carrying each other's coffins.
The socket slips from his hold,
falls fast from his fingertips,
knuckles scraping hard against metal,
blood instantly appearing like sunspots.
For less than a welcome home hug
or one more reminder we lost the war
Jimmy Lee swears he'll get The Ox
on the road again within the hour,
then drains the last drop
of foam from another dead soldier,
crumples it in his hand.
He bets me
before the next cold one
touches the sides
he'll have replaced
the ball bearings,
bled the breaks,
changed the oil,
and tuned her up.
Since he came back
from Vietnam
he rarely talks
about the war,
only of sin and forgiveness.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Was my soul, my body, my mind.
Instead, what they got
Was a declaration to wage war on the war.
In the Nam,
During my relationship
Between being the manipulated
And the manipulator,
I was nothing more
Than U.S. Grade "A" American meat,
Used for some bureaucrat's political gain.
Now, over forty years later,
In this war of no fronts,
An MIA in my own country,
I sleep lightly,
Keep a knife nearby on the night stand,
Continue to go on night patrols,
Look for an alternative revenge.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2004
VWP 2015 First published in Revenge and Forgiveness: An Anthology of Poems
edited by Patrice Vecchione 2004
True Love
She married him a week before he deployed to Vietnam,
On Christmas Day in 1969,
The happiest and saddest occasion in her young life,
A life framed with an unknown future,
Filled with unknown expectations,
Daring beyond the moment,
A kind of hesitant anticipation,
Determined, in the spur of the moment,
To be lived delicately and dangerously.
Loving him since her junior year in high school,
Discovering the epiphany of true love for the first time,
She shared her inner most secrets
With her soul mate girlfriends,
Her monologues a verbal diary.
They envied her, the first of the four
To find the man of their dreams,
A Christian man, a man respected
In their small community,
The quarterback on the varsity team
That led them to a state championship.
He was her universe, her world, her everything.
A year later he came back from Vietnam,
A boy of fifty, deeply scarred and depressed.
For the first week he never touched her,
Never held her, never kissed her.
Never spoke a word to her at all.
Late at night, he hid outside in the tool shed
So she wouldn’t see him cry.
His mood swings unbearable.
Followed by violent, emotional outbursts
That startled her, scared her, spooked her into hiding.
Half the time she didn’t know
If she should fly, freeze or fight.
His insomnia became her jungle terrain,
His PTSD her PTSD.
He slept with a pistol and a knife under his pillow.
His nightmares so intense
She had to sleep in a separate bedroom, fearful for her life.
She confided to her mother he'd been living
Multiple roles since he got back.
That something was terribly wrong.
That his anger was tangible.
So tangible she could smell it. Taste it.
That his rage was dark and foreboding,
Vicious and savage. Cruel.
He embarrassed himself amongst their friends
Until they had no friends.
He withdrew a nightmare at a time
Until he didn’t give a fuck anymore.
He sedated himself, day and night, doing drugs of all kinds,
His drinking destructive.
She could see he was annihilating a part of himself.
But he wouldn't let her in.
She was at a juncture. Should she stay or go.
The wall he had erected
Between them was insurmountable,
A formidable, unconquerable barrier.
One night she came home after a night
Of self-imposed sanctuary with her girlfriends
And found him hanging from a garage rafter,
The noose tight around his neck,
His body lax and loose,
A note near the toppled stool
Saying, It's better this way.
The moment surreal.
His death an emotional time bomb
He had planted in her heart
About to erupt and mushroom.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in Dead Snakes 2015
Stand Off
A disabled Vietnam veteran, legs blown off at the knees from a land mine in III Corp in 1967, checking into a dingy hotel in downtown San Francisco, has traveled over fifteen hundred miles for three days and nights to be near his estranged wife and twenty year old daughter. Inside the bare room, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and dried semen, he feels the gnawing presence of loneliness and depression, the painful gut-wrench of separation, the despondency that has come from being unemployed the past few years. He visualizes his phantoms in group therapy, shouting and sobbing, as he unpacks his personal possessions: a ratty toothbrush, a box of baking soda, a clean flannel shirt, a pair of faded Levis. On this cold winter evening in December, with wind blowing through the cracks and crevices chilling the marrow of his bones, he imagines being asked to discuss his difficulties and problems freely, to come out of silent isolation and accept the truth about himself. Today he doesn't need God; he knows he's lost everything that meant anything to him. All he has left is hope. In his world he pictures a fairy tale reconciliation, a chance to repair the rips and damage in what she called an unpredictable marriage. As he considers this unexpected possibility, he tapes an explosive device to his chest, triggered by a photoelectric cell, which he will activate at daybreak. In a few moments the standoff will begin. Now, he calmly phones the police.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Cherry Boy Comes Home from the Nam
When I came back to the states from Vietnam on 7 February 1968, DEROSing at Oakland Army Terminal, from midnight to six in the morning, I was hoping my entire family would be in Stockton to greet me. Only my mother met me at the bus terminal. Naturally, I was pleased to see her, but I was bitterly disappointed no one else had accompanied her. I didn't have a girlfriend because in basic training she had written me the proverbial Dear John letter. There wasn't a protester or, for that matter, an army recruiter at the terminal either. I had gotten a letter shortly before I left Camp Bearcat forewarning me that a Welcome Home Party was being arranged. I yearned to hear the cheers and yells from my loved ones, feel the pats and slaps on my back, hands grasping hands, lips touching lips, the words "We’re so glad you made it back alive and in one piece" that I dreamt of it for days. I almost forgot the mortar attacks and sniper rounds. I was in a state of short timer's frenzy. I pictured a humongous party on the 4th of February, the date I was supposed to arrive. Like all good signs born under a bad sign, the 68 TET ruined my homecoming. On the fourth of February swarms of Viet Cong endeavored to come through the concertina wire at Long Binh, Ben Hoa. I had already turned in my weapon and the rest of my gear earlier during processing. Their smoldering bodies—fresh from barrage after barrage of Willie Peter rounds—lay contorted, spread eagled, fused to their fate, symbolic of man's ability to efface man from the planet. Was it their death or my own spiritual one that created the indifference I feel now? It's been forty years since the Nam and a little over twenty years since my mother died. Now, a homecoming party that never happened is nothing more than an old memory, a roll of film never developed.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1994
VWP 2015 First published in Nobody Gets Off the Bus:
The Viet Nam Generation Big Book 1994
The Media's Magical Treatment of History
A kid, naïve and innocent, grows up reading Fenimore Cooper's novels, never thinking about the relationship between Natty Bumpo and Indian John. On the radio, in the mountains of Montana, he listens intently to broadcasts of the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Later, as a teenager in California, at the precipice of Manifest Destiny, he reads comic books and discovers Red Ryder and Little Beaver. Never once does he question what these heroes, white and red, might say to one another around the campfire after the sun has set serenely in the West. These champions, of course, have never heard of Plato, Machiavelli, or Coleridge, but neither has he. In his mind, he unquestionably believes in the willing suspension of disbelief. After all, this is the art and craft of fiction, the illustrator's airbrush, the voice-over of authority he has been weaned on. Even though he cannot hear the silence of Natty's laughter, or the father-to-son conversations Red Ryder and Little Beaver have, he has always felt a sense of loyalty and love in Tonto’s words "Kemo Sabe". But it isn't until he is sent to Vietnam in 1967 that he learns cowboy heroism is nothing more than aggression, that the roles of victim and victimizer and the massacred and the massacre have been perversely reversed.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1994
VWP 2015 First published in Nobody Gets Off the Bus:
The Viet Nam Generation Big Book 1994
~
Civil War of the Soul
You keep asking the same question
over and over
to those who will not listen:
If it wasn't a civil war,
then why were we fighting
men, women, and children?
Like Kerouac on the road,
a hobo riding the rails,
a saint in search of the Grail,
you separate reality from fantasy,
select Fellini as your point man,
cross over life's invisible line of demarcation,
and remove your Rosencrantz and Guildenstern doubt.
For years you've looked for Viet Nam
after Viet Nam
in the drugs you took
in the alcohol you consumed
until you saw the lie
for what it was.
Now in your early fifties
you know how lemmings feel
going over the cliff,
know how pigs and cattle feel
when they're led down the chute,
know how young men feel
when they're cannon fodder
in another senseless war.
Left alone like a refugee
forced to choose
between two countries
you stave off sadness
and suicide
wrestle the demons
in this civil war of the soul.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Chills and Fever
Benny Mays and I were fed up with jungle warfare and our tour in Vietnam. So Benny, a young black man from Watts, refused to go on a night patrol. He'd had a vision, warning him tonight's combat assault would not be a bargain of events. The next morning a kangaroo court was held. A rear echelon officer addressed the jury. We have not been training Barbie dolls to kill Viet Cong, he screamed. This soldier disobeyed an order. The lieutenant assumed the air of a mythical god, delighting in a perverse passion for justice, and delivered his Pied Piper offering like the last of the true believers. His voice echoed throughout the courtroom as if each word was a blow from the axe wielder. Benny, suffering chills and fever, sagged to his knees like a sunken fence.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Buddy System
Frank calls today,
Says The Buzzard
Checked out from a drug overdose.
I ask if Tony, Wild Bill Ramirez,
Odom and Nichols know.
That's all that's left of us now.
We congratulate each other
For surviving The Nam, so far.
Who would have guessed
Sutton would die of AIDS two years ago
While directing a production of STRANGE SNOW.
Who would have guessed Max
Would drink himself to death,
Survive three marriages,
Bear a child born without a brain,
Another born with web feet,
Lose more jobs than a company
Downsizing in the middle of the night?
Who would have believed Nate Longley
Would be killed in a freak accident,
A beam giving way
On a high rise 55 stories up?
Turner was predictable.
When he held up that branch
Of Bank of America and was obliterated
By the swat team, we weren't too surprised.
Yeah, Frank says, Life's a goddamn S & D mission.
You come back from getting your ass kicked
in an ambush and years later
You still dwell on the things
That were significant then.
How you would have done the mission differently.
Now forty years later, after normalization,
You go back to Vietnam on company business,
Help establish a capitalistic base
In what once was a communist stronghold.
Frank, I ask, What the hell was that war all about?
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Perimeter
We've filled sandbags all afternoon,
Setting up a perimeter
In a clear and secured area.
A couple hours later,
During a hard monsoon rain,
We're ordered to slit the bloated bags
With bayonets and move camp
300 meters north before night falls.
Wet, exhausted, pissed off,
Some of us slip into slumberland,
Dream of family, friends, freeways.
The rest of us curse
The 5th VC Infantry Division
For not showing up to the party.
Asleep in a Vietnamese graveyard,
Danny calls out for Lan,
His girlfriend, a dancer at the Pagoda Club.
In the half light of the morning,
A couple of us see a black scorpion
Scamper across the wet red dirt,
Plant a perverted hicky on his neck,
A kiss so provocative,
Danny moans for more.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Poets On the Line #9 & 10 The Millenium Issue 2014
Flak Jacket
Sometimes when it was too hot
To wear a shirt
And Major Stiles wasn't around
Handing out Article 15s
Like they were all purpose capsules
Bobby Joe wore his flak jacket
Unzipped,
Flaunted his white belly
And farmer's tan,
Risked the demotion
And loss of pay.
His bro, Stevie R,
Liked to strip to his waist.
Showed off his 18 inch biceps.
Boasted he'd gotten his guns
At Al's Gym in Jersey.
Three Rivers, a Hopi Indian,
Felt like a buffalo hunter
Wrapped in a wool overcoat
During the dead of summer.
He'd sprinkle the ground
With red dirt to cover the red
Of his spirit
In this part of Indian country.
Bobbie Joe, Stevie R, and Three Rivers
Cleaned their M-16s
On top of the track.
Sat cross legged
Like tribal chiefs at a powwow,
Drank warm Kool-Aid from their canteens.
It was so hot and humid
That vest and man bonded
Like peanut butter
Stuck to the roof of your mouth.
Last night
Bobby Joe dreamt
He'd met his wife
In Honolulu on R&R.
Stevie R ranted:
It's him or me,
Kill or be killed.
Said, Ain't this a bitch.
We hunt Charles for weeks
And he don't want no part
Of our shit.
Now, worked up
into a lather
Stevie R slapped a clip
Into his M-16,
Chambered a round,
Flipped off the safety,
And pulled the trigger.
Bobby Joe groaned
Like someone hit him
In the solar plexus.
A crimson spot,
The size of a dime,
Appeared near his open flak jacket
Just above his heart.
He toppled over the side of the track,
Landed face down,
Sprawled and twisted
In the red dirt.
The only man Stevie R
Killed during his tour
In Viet Nam.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2002
VWP 2015 First published in Red River Review 2002
~
Jumping Ship
That morning at chow
rumors float like jettisoned debris.
Psycho Man leaped over the railing
sometime after midnight
on the way to the ship's brig,
handcuffs straining against
blood and bone,
plunging feet first
into the cold, black sea.
Each time one of the MPs
threw him a life preserver
he pushed it away.
For a few minutes
he was in the spotlight,
bobbing up and down
like an unsinkable cork
before being sucked
into the ship's propellers.
That afternoon while searching
in circles for the P Man,
we listen to Hanoi Hannah
on a short-wave receiver.
She knows we're coming,
knows our troop strength,
knows the names of our officers,
predicts how many of us will die
in the coming year.
Later, like derelicts huddled
around a bonfire, we listen to
The Lakers play Philadelphia
from The Sports Arena,
Jerry and Elgin
against Hal and Wilt,
a game we understand.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Liberation
He was there to liberate
the oppressed of South Vietnam.
But when his convoy drove up Highway One
to Camp Bearcat
all he saw were American soldiers
standing or lying by the side of the road,
as if the war zone he had been prepared for
was in another country.
Where’s the war? He asked his friend
sitting next to him.
Stopping at a checkpoint
near a hamlet
his friend pointed to an old woman
staring intensely at them with hatred.
There, he said, In her eyes.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Poets On The Line Vol. 6 [Vietnam work] 2014
Car Wash
That sweltering April summer afternoon
when Ramirez and I take a 5 ton
down to the river
to wash the red dirt
from its banged-up olive drab body.
I leave my M-16 inside the cab
propped against the sandbagged floorboard,
concealed from children
playing in the tepid water nearby.
I enter a crude dwelling
lacking electricity and plumbing,
smell the paraffin odor from a candle stub
on a saucer in the center of the table.
See the hole underneath the bed
surrounding the dirt floor.
A faded photo of Father Ho
tacked upon the wall
of the dimly lit hut
looks down at us.
Together the old ones
pour green tea
into a cracked bowl,
their fingers like frail fans
opening and closing.
I recognize sadness
in the old woman's face,
see my mother
at the airport
for the last time
before flying back to Ft. Riley,
my right arm holding her shoulder
as if she's the child,
her mouth downturned,
her heart broken.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Beneath a Thin Layer of Life
Tet 1968
Incoming mail arrives,
a barrage in the black hours of the night,
messianic visitors from space.
Meteoritic showers of mortar rounds,
defying darkness,
penetrate the perimeter,
malignant in execution.
Our new point man takes a direct hit,
a lob shot,
landing on top of his steel pot.
He vanishes.
At the entrance of a corrugated iron bunker,
a buddy lies frozen in the fetal position.
Beneath a thin layer of life,
he ruminates about the progeny of permanence,
as Viet Cong,
overseeing death and destruction,
infiltrate the landscape like ghosts.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
G.I. Party
For D.M. ( Vietnam veteran - committed suicide 1984 )
Today you reached retirement
with a disturbed and primal conscience.
Two 12 gauge Remington shotgun shells
saturated the field of ice
that separated body count
from catatonic commitment.
Drunk and stoned,
down in your worst moment,
you subpoenaed yourself
into believing
the mission
was more important
than the man.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1994
VWP 2015 First published in Nobody Gets Off the Bus:
The Viet Nam Generation Big Book 1994
~
Draft Notice
3 May 1966
Late afternoon. Friday.
Sacramento simmers in hundred degree heat.
Mom greets me, grim news in her voice,
a sorrow I'd heard a couple months before
at my father's funeral: the somber sadness
from which she'd never recovered.
For those fleeting mercurial moments
between life and beyond,
I'd held dad in my arms,
heard his death rattle,
a staccato low-pitched gurgling sound,
rode in the ambulance,
called a Catholic priest,
dealt with the nightmare.
I hear the faint sound
of war drums beating,
imagine my mother sobbing
beside her son's coffin.
The fire and smoke of my life
rise higher and higher.
My fate, a booby trap, detonates,
destroys what's left of my fragile world.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Hometown Hero
Like a hometown hero from the heartland,
a poor black from the projects,
a son expected to emulate his father,
I'm drafted, wander off to war,
told to kill for an idea,
to kill a Commie for Christ.
My coworkers at the aircraft plant,
both World War II and Korean veterans,
agree it's my patriotic duty, right or wrong,
to defend the flag, motherhood, the American Way.
It's understood we must bomb
North Vietnam back to the Stone Age.
That I must do my job, fight like a man
in this Theatre of the Absurd.
I'm ordered to wage cruel war
on my own species in a country
that has never known peace.
Sheep like, I never question my role.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Weapons Cache
We've traveled on a bus
from the Oakland Army Induction Center
to Fort Ord.
After piling off,
a corporal, wearing starched fatigues,
spit-shined brogans, and a helmet liner,
orders us to form five lines of ten men each,
to stand at attention,
to not move a muscle or make a sound.
He barks out commands
to dump our overnight bags
onto the ground,
to put any weapons we have
in the plastic buckets
being passed like collection plates.
From the back row
I see guys toss stilettos,
Saturday night specials,
brass knuckles, blackjacks,
ice picks, and other paraphernalia
into the wire handled canisters.
I hear metal strike metal,
harsh discordant sounds
that grow heavier and heavier
as the bucket comes closer.
Only the guy next to me
sees my contribution
thrown into the brim-filled five gallon container,
a tiny penknife dad
gave me as a graduation present
I use occasionally to pare my nails.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Private Numnuts
"Before we can get to a place of peace, we have to touch our suffering - embrace it & hold it."
At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace ( Claude Anshin Thomas )
The Drill Instructor, veins protruding from his neck, yells at a platoon of new recruits to answer post haste. He says, Which is easier to kill? A fly? Or, pointing to a cruit in the first row, private Numnuts over there? With his left hand rolled tightly in a fist, and the other with forefinger extended, he signals to private Numnuts to move front and center. The platoon hears the whirring. The fly trapped inside the D.I.'s hand going bonkers. And, as quick as a gambler moving thimbles in a shell game, he has private Numnuts by the throat. Which is easier to kill? He screams again to the platoon, standing at attention, outside on a very hot Kansas afternoon, sweating bullets in their skivvies. The fly or Numnuts? Paralyzed with fear, they are speechless, their mouths open, forming perfect round O's. Numnuts! he yells. Goddammit! It's Numnuts! The D.I. squeezes tighter and tighter until private Numnut's eyes pop from their sockets. Now, speaking softly, almost in ecstasy, the D.I. slowly punctuates each word, saying, as innocently as a murderer confessing his sins, Believe me girls, I wouldn't hurt a fly.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Homestead Review 2014
AWOL
Riding from Stockton to Oakland to Ft. Ord,
we reminisce about our high school days,
laugh because we never fit in.
He's from Stockton; I'm from Lodi.
Swear on a pint of sloe gin
we'd dated some of the same girls.
We're unsure what this war is all about,
can't figure out why
we're fighting people halfway around the world.
We're draftees.
At Ft. Ord we talk one more time
before I'm shipped to Fort Riley, Kansas.
Eight months later we meet again in Tay Ninh.
I'm outa here in four months and a wake up, I say.
He confesses this is his first day in Vietnam,
that he went AWOL.
Reveals to me he missed his family, his girl too much.
Informs me the Military Police hunted him,
interrogated his parents, dogged his girlfriend,
cross-examined his former employer.
Finally, after living underground for eight months
he turned himself in.
The army, he says, gave him a choice:
Vietnam or Leavenworth.
Now, nearly three decades later
I recall the day we met in Tay Ninh for the last time,
puffs of smoke appearing and disappearing
on the Black Virgin Mountain behind us
like phantoms in tulle fog.
Hear him confess to me, venom in his voice,
that this war is a curse that will follow us to our graves.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
Local Board No. 32
For years now I've longed for
The executive secretary, the principle clerk,
To understand that her decisions
were the reasons why twelve men
From my hometown died in Viet Nam.
That Congress had not formally declared war,
That there was no clear and present danger,
That there was no need to impose a draft
That I need her to explain to me
Why I was drafted when others were not.
That her signature on my induction notice
Was like a death warrant.
Old matriarch and executioner,
You could have been anybody's mother or grandmother,
And I wondered then, as I do now,
How many of your sons and grandsons got drafted.
How many died in the red dirt and monsoon mud of Viet Nam.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Dead Snakes 2014
Candyasses
During basic training,
Fort Riley, Kansas,
Was the asshole of the earth.
He spent nights
Crying in the latrine, beaten down,
Whimpering, mewling,
The other recruits
Thought he would wash out
Be on the streets again, a free man.
But when he became a squad leader
In a strac killer platoon
They depended upon him.
Especially the mama's boy,
A shit-bird, whose weapon always jammed
During a fire fight.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Dust Off
A medivac chopper flies
On a slant into a cold LZ
To pick up a Lt. Col,
Two Brigade majors
And three wounded grunts.
The dead brass lay
On ponchos
In the pouring rain,
Droplets streaming down
Their freshly shaven faces.
Three WIAs,
Scared and bleeding,
With stomach and leg wounds,
Beg for a ride out,
Pleading for a freedom bird
Like grunts near the end
Of their tour.
Men scramble to load the wounded
While the dust off chopper
Sits shimmying and shaking.
The chopper pilot
Waves them off,
Points to the KIAs,
The index finger of his flight glove
Swaggering like a short-timer’s stick.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2014
VWP 2015 First published in Dead Snakes 2014
White Mice
We're in a convoy
stopped at a narrow bridge
while two MPs and a couple
of South Vietnamese Police
argue and gesture. The White Mice
are on one side, the MPs on the other.
I see one of the White Mice
motion for a deuce-and-a-half
towing two trailers of ammo,
filled full of mess equipment,
and two cooks, to cross the bridge.
Everything happens in slow motion,
as if it has been orchestrated,
and this is the final take.
The Six-By slides into the rice paddy,
turns over from the weight
of the ammo trailers.
What looks like no more
than two to three feet of water
must seem like an ocean
to those trapped.
The driver emerges
a couple of minutes later,
gasping for breath.
I don't see the cooks.
Disbelief turns to anger.
I curse the White Mice's incompetency.
Two cooks drown in a ditch
while black clad peasant women
in conical straw hats
replant green seedlings.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 1996
VWP 2015 First published in Viet Nam Generation: A Journal of Recent History
and Contemporary Culture Volume 7, Numbers 1-2 1996
Droopy Dawg
He sits on his cot sharpening his killing knife,
a Bowie that can easily cut through metal, even steel.
Droopy Dawg, a self-appointed mercenary from Charlie Company,
takes money for patrols.
He barks in a slow southern accent
that he kills gooks for a price.
He's an expert with an M-79 Grenade Launcher.
Tonight at Camp Bearcat, before we go out tomorrow morning,
many of us are getting stoned, getting juiced,
getting totally ripped.
It is 1967 and this shit is no longer fun.
Too many of us are ending up in THE STARS AND STRIPES,
KIAs dead and going home!
Droopy volunteers to take a ride with the LRRPs
on their tracks into the bush.
He's got over $1500 on him stashed in a money belt
he had specially made in Saigon.
To some of us he's a real up-and-coming entrepreneur,
claims he's going to start his own business
when he gets back to the world.
When the LRRPs come back the next day
I hear Droopy bought the farm, got zapped,
got wasted
that when he got to Graves Registration
all he had on him was an empty wallet,
his girlfriend's picture,
and a debt of death Uncle Sam could never repay.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
The New Enemy
He sits on his cot sharpening his killing knife,
a Bowie that can easily cut through metal, even steel.
Droopy Dawg, a self-appointed mercenary from Charlie Company,
takes money for patrols.
He barks in a slow southern accent
that he kills gooks for a price.
He's an expert with an M-79 Grenade Launcher.
Tonight at Camp Bearcat, before we go out tomorrow morning,
many of us are getting stoned, getting juiced,
getting totally ripped.
It is 1967 and this shit is no longer fun.
Too many of us are ending up in THE STARS AND STRIPES,
KIAs dead and going home!
Droopy volunteers to take a ride with the LRRPs
on their tracks into the bush.
He's got over $1500 on him stashed in a money belt
he had specially made in Saigon.
To some of us he's a real up-and-coming entrepreneur,
claims he's going to start his own business
when he gets back to the world.
When the LRRPs come back the next day
I hear Droopy bought the farm, got zapped,
got wasted
that when he got to Graves Registration
all he had on him was an empty wallet,
his girlfriend's picture,
and a debt of death Uncle Sam could never repay.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Oakland Army Induction Center
Terrified and dazed,
we stand with our toes flat against a yellow line
that separates us from them,
four military doctors in white coats from each branch of the service,
yelling like tough guys for us to bend over and spread our cheeks.
I look to my right and left, seeing young men with both hands
clutching the fleshy part of their face.
They just don't get it.
We're all hemorrhoids here anyway.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
First Love
For over twenty days
you've been topside
on a ship headed for Vietnam.
You're nineteen and naive.
She'd sent you a Dear John Letter
during Basic Training.
Yet you still love her.
In the Fall Semester
she'd asked you out for a date.
Three months later,
after proposing marriage,
you dropped out of school,
got drafted.
At the drive-in that spring,
you kissed her,
named your children.
You look over the side of the ship,
see white water
cutting across the bow
like a cloud being separated
by a strong wind.
You think of her often,
feel like dying,
jumping overboard.
You float farther and farther
from her as if you're being pulled
by a current with a logic of its own.
In her last letter she confessed
she'd found someone else.
Now pinned down under fire,
in the mud and the rain,
you're so close
to the earth you swear
you can smell
the fragrance of her hair,
smell her perfume,
smell the sweet scent
of her sex,
feel her soft skin.
When RPG rounds and mortars
pound your perimeter
you scream hard for your mother.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
After the Fall
When Saigon fell in April 1975 you were in Australia
Waiting for the winning numbers in the Opera House lottery,
Expatriated from your family, from your friends, from your country.
For seven years you self-exiled yourself from the U.S.
Then like a man recently released from prison,
You returned home to California, a foreigner, a newcomer, a visitor.
You enrolled in a community college, took an American history class,
Learned from the past what mistakes will be made again in the future,
Began reading the history of Vietnam, starting with the 1954 Geneva Accords
And The Pentagon Papers. You replaced willful ignorance with critical thinking,
Examined the moral imperatives leading to the war, questioned the unnecessary deaths
Of three to five million brown-skinned people in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Declared you'd never trust the government again, never trust politicians again.
You scorned warmongers and war profiteers. But those you despise the most
Are the pseudo patriots, those who use patriotism to silence criticism against
Those holding them in contempt.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Jimmy Lee
Jimmy Lee jacks up
the front wheel
of Babe The Blue Ox,
my 1964 Buick Le Sabre,
and removes it
like a pit crew mechanic
at the Indy Five Hundred.
Afterwards he chugalugs
another cold Miller Lite
in what must be
record breaking time.
I love him like a brother.
This Irish misfit.
Long red hair
flowing past his shoulder blades
like a Viking war lord.
Before tackling the serious stuff
we've inhaled two 12 packs
while watching the 49ers play
the Rams to a 35-35 tie.
Laughing deeply from lungs
already donated
to Johns Hopkins,
Jimmy Lee tells the clerk
at Safeway
I'm this weeks $1000 winner
in their football contest.
It's five in the afternoon;
a typical sweltering summer sun
blistering the concrete patio floor
of my San Joaquin Valley villa.
Hot enough to fry quesidillas
on the cement.
Jimmy Lee has descended
from the Sierra Nevadas
like a trapper on the take
to fix The Ox,
loving her like
she's his better half.
We're both students
at the local state university,
Vietnam veterans
living on the G.I. Bill.
Jimmy Lee sleeps in a trailer
amongst the pines in thin air.
I rent a cottage that has no heat
or central air in the barrio
on the west side of town.
We're both social pariahs,
a couple of modern day misfits.
We don't care about anyone or anything,
dead men in our own homecoming parade
carrying each other's coffins.
The socket slips from his hold,
falls fast from his fingertips,
knuckles scraping hard against metal,
blood instantly appearing like sunspots.
For less than a welcome home hug
or one more reminder we lost the war
Jimmy Lee swears he'll get The Ox
on the road again within the hour,
then drains the last drop
of foam from another dead soldier,
crumples it in his hand.
He bets me
before the next cold one
touches the sides
he'll have replaced
the ball bearings,
bled the breaks,
changed the oil,
and tuned her up.
Since he came back
from Vietnam
he rarely talks
about the war,
only of sin and forgiveness.
by Contributing Poet Victor Henry Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Bio: Victor Henry is a Viet Nam veteran, in Nam all of 1967 up to 7 February 1968
with the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division.
He earned his master's degrees in English and Library Science.
His work has appeared in numerous e-zines, small press magazines and anthologies.
His new book, What They Wanted, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2015.
Victor-Henry.net
with the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division.
He earned his master's degrees in English and Library Science.
His work has appeared in numerous e-zines, small press magazines and anthologies.
His new book, What They Wanted, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2015.
Victor-Henry.net
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