Vietnam Elegy
A Vet's Story

In ‘67, I felt death for the first
instant of its craving.

I saw the mind sway and quit.
I felt the heart stop --
blood rubbing my eyes
with tangible longing.

I miss the knife of sex driving
inside my skin. I would never
be innocent as human again.
I would never be mourned.

My name is Malcolm.

2.

I am reborn and invisible
in a deep sexual chant;
it begins my Mass
of the dead. I am lost there.

I marvel at pieces of wit--
how, drunk on death
we loved in the bathhouses
at stand-down, watching
her eyes of rage murder.

My name is Malcolm

3.

My life has been reported wrong:
I died thirty-three years ago.
Vietnam took me away like
a bolt of fire; I rested.

I am all men and women
in this way. I copied death
from breathing.

I find nothing easy about this second
murder of self. I was taken as a whore
by friendly fire. I set my own fuse.
Dismembered, I burned.

All soldiers rise again
as flesh without ashes.

Everything rode in that Army,
in the cost of extreme unction
tendered by mouth of self.

The priest prays,
anoints five senses
with death of semen.

“Sacrament is an outward
and visible sign of grace”

My Name is Malcolm.

4.

After my death I rode undulation of vulva
trusting the faith of the mother humpers of god.
I became that spirit an imaginary death.

I imagine the lives I would
have known had I lived longer.

My name was Malcolm.

Vietnam Elegy #2

I am the dead soldier
called Malcolm. I find
nothing easy
about my record
of the murder of self.

I creep into body bags
and weep for unknown
soldiers who might
have used them
had I not died first.

Yes, my eyes close softly;
my back surges, thighs
tighten, my pulse last
thought before rapture.

I remember how my face opened
when I pulled the arms
of children awake from death
by napalm, --they were made crisp
into sculpture, cradled
in the stench of burnt jelly,
as the labia of one stretched
to the phallus of another
binding us together.

One child was seven. She,
daughter of dead mother;
I felt the gasp of my death
carry her whole to surface
of ancestors. How do I accept
this stretch of sacraments?

I rose in stalks of palm
in raped green of canopy
where I hid from conscience.

I murdered in that peril, caught
by men zipped into body bags,
marking their plots; they
became one author of my lives.

Vietnam Elegy #3

At graves registration Malcolm
was held for final orders;
his body gathered in rows

They collected him
as a lake of skin
without consequence.

He had no fingers
to push air in front
of mouth as kiss:

All sense caught by pause
in parts of speech; fragments
made blank with last thought.

Vietnam Elegy #4

Malcolm searched death:
He held the edge of his mirror.

Look again at his outline;
map where he pushed her thighs
apart at that last dance.
He was in the world of course

She danced on the patio
in his favorite green dress --
Next day he left for ‘Nam.

In three months
he would be white ash
in her mouth as she kissed
what remained before
he dissolved, brushed
into slurry of air,
scattered over Hudson.

Fragments of his atoms
clung to her dark blouse.

He materialized in outline.
There is no love at death.

Did you notice, before his ash fell,
heaven became green again?

Vietnam Elegy #5

Child of Malcolm; born
dead, 20 November 1967

This is my story: my only child
died moments before my own death.
Her name would have been Marie.
She is the first testament of my sacrifice.

When she strangled, I heard my suffering
on the way to Nirvana; my wife will march
our coffins as they slide over flags lowered,
by planes of Taps measured in sonnets.

My wife, our child died in her own miracle.
You called her Marie. I watched the blood
from your miscarriage run down your legs
on the white rugs where we made love.

You will hear this poem through the breath
of the medic who could not start my heart
when friendly fire burned scars like arc lights.

The Doc will tell you my secret: Marie
did not suffer. She will rise again
as the palm of my skin.

She will be born of your flesh alone.
Love, your husband, Malcolm.

Vietnam Elegy #6

On The Nature of Rainforests

January 1, 2001

We live in Brazil, not the country
but the state of mind. We build
a fortune in Amazon tributaries.
I lived in Vietnam, not the country
but the dazzle of rainforests
where the unspeakable land
had been dying for centuries.

2. January 31, 1968

My angel had eight years
when she found me. My birth
as Malcolm continued assent.
We were not artifacts in museums
or gargoyles to mate with death
and carry us to Avernus

This was more than Homer
and the legions of Gods
unfettered by delusions.

I lived myths of the outcast
one more week and I am born.

Before my resurrection
I laugh uncomfortably,
I killed no one but self.

I separate, being
and not being, left
that jungle years
after steam baths
raised from semen
with one last fuck
for the miracle
of mankind.

3.

I am human being
in love again
as the passage
of waves outward
meet oceans
struck inward.

I simmer
with millennium
as consort; I
waited thirty years
for the next frames
of this movie desire.