Tuesday,
Been working on this poem for MLK Day . . . It didn't come out as much of a tribute for a great American (if not THE greatest American patriot ever). It is what it is. Got a bit of cussing in it so I didn't post it directly to Facebook. Some folk are a little squeamish about "The F Word" or as people love to call it these days "THE F-BOMB!" Silly. But I'm sort of glad we shy away from the word because it would lose it's power as a word if everybody accepted it, if everybody admitted to using it. Anyway, I plan to do some more rewriting . . . later down the road. For now I think it works pretty good.
Been working on this poem for MLK Day . . . It didn't come out as much of a tribute for a great American (if not THE greatest American patriot ever). It is what it is. Got a bit of cussing in it so I didn't post it directly to Facebook. Some folk are a little squeamish about "The F Word" or as people love to call it these days "THE F-BOMB!" Silly. But I'm sort of glad we shy away from the word because it would lose it's power as a word if everybody accepted it, if everybody admitted to using it. Anyway, I plan to do some more rewriting . . . later down the road. For now I think it works pretty good.
Dumb-ass
It
was hot, extremely hot, Vietnam fuckin’ hot.
Stepped
off the airplane with about forty-eight
other
unlucky motherfuckers at this airport . . .
There
were squads of grunts, short timers,
on
the blistering tarmac. Worn-out jungle utes,
un-bloused
boots, raggedy-ass covers
on
their not so stateside-regulation haircuts,
all
of ‘em diddy-bopping towards that sweet,
jet
airliner we just dog piled out of.
Them heading home, us headed in.
Them heading home, us headed in.
Fuckin’
Marine green cattle car!
Clouds
of road dust even hotter
than
the air outside swirling
through
the metal slits
gagging
us newbies . . .
“What the hell’s going on here?
Dead center of a war zone
and no fuckin’ weapons?
What the hell’s going on?”
Staging
area, somewhere in Da Nang.
I
step off the transport . . . first thing
I
see, two black brother Marines
sprawled
out in the red dirt next
to
a 12X listening intently
to
the broadcast crackling
out
of a banged up portable radio:
* “I'm
only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have
some -- some very sad news for all of you -- Could you lower those signs,
please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for
all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and
that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis,
Tennessee.”
I’m
looking for the convoy that’s gonna take me up North
to
someplace called Camp Carroll. Camp the fuckin’ Carroll.
Dumb-ass
name for a Marine Base!
Almost
as dumb-ass as flying into Vietnam
on
a commercial jet . . .
The
head stewardess freaking out over the intercom,
“Please depart the plane
in a speedy and orderly fashion.”
Sure,
we can do that!
Got
no fuckin’ weapons,
got
no fuckin’ flak jacket,
got
no fuckin’ helmet,
but
we can fuckin’ do that!
What
a dumb-ass stewardess.
What
a dumb-ass war.
rrw
o1-19-15
* -Robert F. Kennedy, April 4, 1968
WOW!
ReplyDeleteThanks, A!
Delete