for your consideration

The American part of me is actively honouring U.S. war dead today, even as I grieve the negative political arc our southern neighbours are flirting with. As always, I will lift one for my Marine soul brother Eddie Weekfall, who was killed four months into his tour. I continue to struggle with my war experiences. The ongoing problem of trauma is that there’s really no good place to keep it in your mind.

It is my honour and responsibility to keep the memory of Eddie alive. As to the countless other dead and wounded I helped process, my thoughts are still with you, and here are some of those thoughts in a poem I’m working on:

cloudy with a chance of cadavers

Delta Med near the DMZ

midday, midyear, mid-tour

a chopper swoops in

scattering our football game

shirts and skins

we run to Triage

but the bird veers to Graves

it doesn’t land

Just bounces off the ground

the crew chief starts

kicking and throwing bodies out

they dive, belly flop and face plant

these recent humans

as the bird darts off

the crunch of their landings grows louder

we take them into Graves

three rows of four

strip them down

check for booby traps

I hose the mud and blood and shit off them

one has a blanker look than the others

I move closer

the top of his skull is gone

his brain drained out

“wow!” I say to no one

“that fucker blew his mind.”

welcome to ‘nam, Devil Dog