Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Vietnam War: Four Poems (Gary B. Fitzgerald)

UH-1D helicopters airlift members of the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment from the Filhol Rubber Plantation area to a new staging area, during Operation "Wahiawa," a search and destroy mission conducted by the 25th Infantry Division, northeast of Cu Chi, 1966. Source: Wikipedia
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Body Count

1.


It's over now so who, I wonder, is going to count

------the arms, eyes, toes and almost bodies?

------Who's going to plant flowers this year

------to grow in the craters like little

------valleys? Who

isn't too busy finding the members of his family

------(and will try to bury them as one)


2.



------The tall defenders are going home.

Goodbye, Big Brother. We will wave goodbye

to you, smiling our thanks for your help

------as we sweat and bend,

------stooping with our little baskets, picking

up the remains of our dead.

3.



------Disturbing not the victor who

is totaling the sum of broken,

destroyed and dead bodies, bled

of all fluids, white and cold like

clay---.---infected---.---at the sores

with necrophiliac worms, bacteria.

War is not half so bad, me buckos,

------as is the counting of the winnings.

--1973


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Slaughter Your Dog-faced Sisters


Slaughter your dog-faced sisters,

-----shred viscera and slice livers.

Pool blood.

Sickening yellow lymphous over under leaves,

-----soak the soil with intestine juice.


Rid earth of them forever.


-----You are the zealous, but you're right;

-----your ways must prevail.


Butcher the human flesh

as though swine hung dangling on silver chains

in speckled abatoirs.


-----Your ways must prevail.

-----A threat to freedom cannot be

tolerated.


Rid the earth of them forever. And that leaves us


only you.

--1989


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Woodstock: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die," Country Joe, 1969



CookCpt
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My Ears Have Ached


-----My ears have ached

-----with the thundering of bombs

-----& lifting, falling buildings,

-----crashing,

-----roaring;

-----the screeching of the rockets

-----at night

-----& the instant flash.

-----My brain has rocked

-----with the explosions of war

-----& the howling

-----of the torn and maimed,

-----but the loudest sound

-----to bear

-----is the silence following

the dawn.

--1977


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I Saw the Lonesome Soldier


-----I saw the lonesome soldier

-----coming home from war at last,

----------to his luscious-green and

----------sleepy-eyed hometown

---------------(however humble) home

-----from war at last, to his boyhood dreams

----------and Mom & Pop. Home to

----------Alice down the street.


----------He was dressed in greenwood

-----with 10 Penny cufflinks

-----and when I saw him,

-----being lowered off the Santa Fe freight,

I thought he was a box of radio component parts.

--1969


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From: Evolving: Poems 1965-2005, by Gary B. Fitzgerald, Copyright 2005.

Posted with permission from author.

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