To Dust We Shall Return

I sit in bunker waiting for
Bomb to end its fall,
A scared young man I am,
The boom kicks up the floor,
As shrilling shell explodes.

Red dust forms a mud-mix,
With blood the hue of rouge,
Rill of tears, sweat from fear
Brings flood on leather
skin once smooth.

No lines on face ‘fore I came
To ‘Nam, the toll of age implies
Lack of rest from guns up north,
Frail nerves and fragile mind, from
Ever present shell and dust.

Red mud-mix has turned to gray,
New York now suffers too,
Nation shares my vivid dream
Of crimson sludge,
Like ‘Nam, puffs reveal a myth.

I gag from haze of long-ago,
Now mixed with ash of TV shows,
The blood, the mud, the gray and red,
My sleepless face, my past in place,
Twin plumes of dust stir Dong Ha rage.

El Vato de Mico, TX
Dong Ha, South Vietnam, September 03, 1967 and 9/11