USARV* POEMS
*(U.S. Army, Republic of Vietnam)
Written in Vietnam, September 1966-October 1967
by David A. Willson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Guard Duty
- An Evening in June--Tan Son Nhut
- My Mind
- Frog Symphony
- The Hind Bite
- Burning Detail
- I Squint
- A Fragment of a Memory - 1965
- Hung Out
- Bone in the Soil
- The Frogs Are Gone
- Alms For the Burned
- Ball, Guts, Leaves
- An ARVN Soldier Speaks For a Bit
- As I Stand Pissing
- Danish Ham From the Cholon PX
- Graffiti--Washington Notebook--Dave Burgin
- You Are Salt
- Your Body Prelude
- Me, At War
- Booklets Are Available
- The Screen : The View From My Desk in the IG Office
- Kool-Aid Sky
- A Short Stint
On guard duty the images are dimmed
Fogged in the moon's light
Caught in the circle of the moon
Silver seen by craning back the neck
From the red laterite smooth-planed ground
Recently rained on and marked as if by
Prehistoric gastropods and trilobites
But merely the curved and mutated imprints
Of the soles of jungle-booted guards
The moon's light fogged
Over a quiet night flitting with frog and
Cricket noises--going biz long and low
Punctuated by a biz-biz short and hectic
A night crawler makes it for the ditch
Past his flaccid mate dead and whitening
On the red soil
a small frog hops, his shadow leaps past him
And he makes the refuge of the ditch
A small white dog trots out of the haze by the fence
And for a few minutes follows me--
Snuffing the grass and chasing the grey lizard
Through the wet grass into the ditch
The dog stops only to scratch a reddened shoulder
Before he jumps the ditch and cuts across the corner
Of the field wet and dark with the lights
Casting shadows on me watching the bubbles
On the surface of the ditch water
Toledo's in the cellar nine games out
And I'm at my desk in the dark
Eyes fed only by the spark
Of the heat lightning about
The south eastern sky. A flare
Drops to light the wall's red dust
And pink tints the doubt-lined letter
On my desk. Your letter to me. Must
I read and write and attempt to see?
I'll try a piece of candle, then put down a
bloated philosophy
Try to balance, prevent display, word play
Combinations becoming nuances unmeant.
I'd prefer to give you the immediate moment
In a closed-throat shout
TOLEDO'S IN THE CELLAR NINE GAMES OUT!
Parts and pieces of a fast lived time
Clutter my rim and lap over into my present
I am a partial amateur on variety
And multiplicity of acts and emotions
My mind is a stammerer a thing ready
To start when half finished
A thing that hardly knows which end to grasp
Before that end has whipped past
That end has whipped past
My mind is a stammerer
My mind
I am not just sound but seeing too
I hear rock and roll on my electric can-opener
And violins from low-flying bats
I strain to read by lights yellow red green
From hovering helicopters
And to see geyser steam in spray hissing from
Trailered insect killer
I look up at shutters on second story windows
And wonder of our cranked tight jalousie love
I stare at sky and hear lizards and crickets
Accompanying radios
I watch bushes and buildings take on new darks
Familiar objects intensified by dusk
Troughs of speckling grey appear
Between banked but featherthin clouds
No stars but a few and dim
Above Tan Son Nhut
I've felt the hind bite of possible disgrace
And moved down the middle in compromise
But I don't shrink to the wall to hide my face
Nor do I sit alone and heave heavy sighs.
I don't flex the whip to drive men along my
path
Nor do I care when they limp along
Dragging their left career or their right wife
I can laugh and let them dip their crippled limbs
In the acid bath
For I know myself and am not ashamed of my shadowed life.
I've become set firm in the dust that's called
the end
But I shout and rant and shave those whiskered ends clean
I like what I know and will live again the life that I've seen
I ask for no more time, nor do I have any to lend.
I spent the day burning brown and yellow
excremental sacrifices
To the black smoked shit god
Fuel oil poured from 17 cans
In the yellow dappled stew
Interbraided with dissolving toilet paper
Fire lit newspapers, old paper bags
(A flame to the oiled
Iridescent surface)
Smog and fried shit float and cling
To my nostrils and my green uniform
Ammoniac smells of piss and the pounding of artillery
Cut through
As the dark smoke settles on underwear
Hanging on leafless bushes
I'm suspicious of things that float and hang in
the air
I adjust my gait carefully when walking in crowds
I frequently pull and fuss with my belt
I attempt to breathe freely, clear my throat
And try to control deep sighs that overpower me
During conversations and haircuts
I squint out the bright sunlight and stride firmly
Although I know the bones in my feet and legs will cause pain
And produce collapse without announcement
With probing thumb I attempt to keep my nasal passages free
Of Debris
In all ways I pay constant homage to my infirmities and fears
Which I expect will increase with age
Distracted, abstracted, requiring everyone to repeat
Their conversations at least twice, sometimes three times,
I go my way, undeterred by any semblance of connection,
Nor halted by awareness of others moving across my path
I grow suspicious of things that croak and sit in pairs
When you've chased down alleyways
And cried at right angled darknesses--
Been taunted by madmen in garbage cans
And jeered from tar paper roofs,
The springed resiliency of love
Has been tested past the test
Stretched beyond the strength innate
Forced beyond the forcing
Shall we have it over again
At normal speeds?
Let's lap dimples with our tongues
Let's suck up swamp water with reeds
And walk holding hands down dry bobsled runs
Let's have it all over again
I'm all hung out in spidered cords
and weakened sick of indecision
I dangle by sticky tips
And eager await the final bite
As some kind of ending
To a life spent avoiding
Conclusions, decisions, commitments
I see him in the corner of my eye
He's coming now
Black shiny lean
Tiny hairs which seem
Tiny hairs which seem
To tickle
There is bone in this red soil
That points itself against the treads
Of the fire machines
The soil that burns
Is not rare earth
But of commonest variety
The blood that turns
To clay
Will remain earth
The soldiers come in the night
Burn the fish and rice
The soil they burn
Is not rare earth
But of commonest variety
The blood rain that falls on the machines
Falls on the soil too
The soil is red
The machines are becoming so:
Treads clay caked red
Bodies flaked metal red
It is not rare blood
That is turning
The machines to earth
But of commonest variety
The machines that turn to earth
The blood that turns to clay
Will remain
And clothe the bone
In this red soil
Don't strain your weak eyes looking
The frogs are gone from their bushes
The yellow lizards are watching
The bugs are there, creeping
The flies and ants and even the little birds
But those small green frogs are gone
Maybe Mrs. Cuc ate them with rice
Maybe she sliced
Them up
Maybe something wild got them,
Although I don't know what would eat them
Except Mrs. Cuc
Mrs. Cuc ate the big frog
That you found on the lawn
When you were mowing
First she tied a string
To its left leg
And dragged it around
It squealed--
She knocked it on the head
And skinned it
Popped it in the pan
And fried it
But Mrs. Cuc has been sick
Hasn't been around lately
And besides, the frogs are damn small.
Skinned they'd provide less meat than all
The flesh under your thumb nails
Or the snails on the nearby wall.
The frogs could be out there right now
But as far as I know
They're gone.
The lizards chirp on
But the frogs are gone
An image of her keeps coming back
The bands of grief that bind her features
The grey disgrace of the letter
Written in a spidery script
Held out in a red rashy hand
Held out to a man who pushes by
Annoyed at the touch
She's attempted to make of him.
But an image of her keeps coming back
Although it's shoved away
Again the taut pulled muscles
Of her cheeks
Again the red rash etched
Across her fingers
Spatter the time, the thought of the man
With a question of why
There is always the blame of the note
The suspicion of the man
That it's not the skillful
Act of a professional
Tagging alms from those susceptible to guilt
But a woman whose family were truly
Napalmed by Americans
As the note claims
It's not really unlikely, is it.
I press my nose against a stone
Peer through a chink into the ground
Feel the gravel indent the bone
Of my knee
Around the edge of time
I knelt, spread our blanket on the grass
And dipped myself in the honeyed slime
Of your mouth
Fast we held, swooped, looped, fell--
How we talked, examined, and prophesied,
Not with ball, guts, or leaves, but the red tangle
Of your hair
I'll move my knee from the point
Of the rock, but won't let seep away
The copper sheened scent of the soft joint
Of your thighs
The dirt is
A clabber of
Yellow frothy curds
Under my bleeding feet
The red and the yellow
Hits my mind as my last
Participation in nationalism
As I stand pissing
Looking down the valley
The hills and their people
Look down on me
And I think:
War is a necessity
As are all inhumanities
Sapless cliches
And dried up images
Often pass through my mind
When I piss
Or empty my bowels
I eat alone
I pick the bone
Free of threads of meat
They ball up in my gut
Like ravelled corduroy
Wrapped on knobby tinker toys
Treat yourselves to jellied chicken feet
And envy me, boys
The fact is I've got the bloat
And I've got it bad
It's sad to float
On black humoured belches that expand the air
For sick I am
But glad that all of you there
Are eating premium saltines and raspberry jam
(Yes I am
Glad)
And Danish Ham from the can, or rolled roast beef
Run it (that fact)
Up your collective asses
For all that could come to pass is
That I'd have a short view
Of you, rapt
Picking seeds from between your teeth
Or maybe crapped out
From Cherry Herring
LBJ wears a false nose.
Bobby Kennedy uses wave set.
Dr. Spock wears rubber pants.
George Hamilton is alive and well, and if he isn't in Argentina
he should be.
Vietnam isn't a good war, but it's the only one we've got.
The Saigon Post, Thursday June 15, 1967
The ants were sprayed
And have flown to the dirt
The frogs are gone the frogs are gone
I remember I chewed on doubt
The flying ants were about
And thickly swarmed the light bulb
The plastic green bushes shook
Their frogs in a sudden wind
Lumps stood out among the hairs
On my knees and elbows
And I thought about the sand
Between your toes
Your hot salt body
And one stray blond eyelash
When we exuded loves juices
In sweet pulpy strings
Drop by drop
There is an arch in your sweet curve
That shakes a tremor in my mind.
This movement does more than any word
To disturb my nerve and tremble time.
The tremor envelopes all of me
As large camouflage python
Swallows monkey, leaving naught to see.
First tease, a jump, furred life gone
From low hanging limb.
Your design trembles this one,
Panics me, as python panicked him.
This scared, this paralyzed, this dumb
Animal of me is watching your body prelude
Our struggle, our bestial feud.
How would you feel if the ordinary quit
And all were strange and unfocused?
Would you shy back from the sound,
The move of someone you once had met?
Would you fear conversation on public pavement
And spend much of your time sidling
For the imagined calm of the past?
When you look at old, and new is seen
Do you doubt yourself and feel insanity's gleam?
Do you? Do you?
How would you feel if the ordinary quit?
How to be a cowboy, fireman, soldier, or thief?
Booklets are available, movies, friends flaunt their knowledge,
Shout it to the deaf, the blind, the halt
To you and me.
To develop beyond your capability to overcome
Is a goal that you can easily reach.
I don't think it comes with being dumb
But look around, who can teach us how to plan
For what we want?
What can we do?
Who can show the way to stay where we know,
To enable us to see that limits are best,
That to stay familiar to all, the same to many
Is the safe tomb of satisfaction, the cool quiet nook
In which anyone can seek shelter from the sun.
The screen I'm looking through
Divides the View
Into quite a few
Little squares
I haven't any idea how many
I won't even ask any-
Body who'd tell me
For sure
But one thing I know
The colored rows
Neat, planned so
Aren't real
When I step outside
The landscape slides
The squares hide
All melds
It's more than adequate proof
That all viewed truth
Changes if one leaves the booth
The Cage
Old Beast, chew the tar
That closed the wound
Threaded scar sewn
With black knotted String
I walked out into a red Kool-Aid Sky
Poured to the roof's black tar margins
Cherry droplets blurred the lenses of my eyes
I kept my fingers bent
While the water flowed
I prevented the light gold
From slipping the joint
I grasp the edge and vault
The ledge to float the mist
Old Beast, it's not your thought
It's my red Kool-Aid Sky
The bodies file down the hall
Not stopping for the ringing bells
A little one leads, the rest all follow
A slight jump, a twitch,
And my mind falls back
My mouth drops slack
And I'm there again
I've left the cans of shit on the red clay
Where the whirled dragonflies move and play
Again I romp among the eye-cupped girls
(Forget the sound of engine-
Wheels biting the red soil-
Impressing the regular mechanical print
In the wet earth--
Forget the machines, rusted beasts
The rain tossed in humps by the wind
And blown horizontally across the field)
Again I romp among the eye-cupped girls
And forget the dead leaves between my thighs