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Saigon Warrior

By Horace Coleman

So my fatigues don't get muddy or bloody or even
too sweaty (the air conditioning's for the equipment - not me).

That doesn't mean I don't fight my necessary way
or feel for the grunts or get shot at in the streets.

Or that I don't feel disgusted the one time I go
to the Caravelle Hotel (where they still make
tablecloths and flatware and a Vietnamese imitation of
a rock band isn't bad (after the third gin and tonic) until
I look out over the river, see tracers and know
they're dying out there.

I figure you could have two lines - like a weekend showing at
a theater with popular movies - and one would be
those I've helped kill and one those I've help save
and there might be more women, children and old people in one
but they can take you out of here too and someone else is going to
have to see if all the napalm and white phosphorous that make
"Crispy Critters" or turns flesh into puddles and cluster bomb units
(like round aerial shotguns loaded with plastic buckshot that
don't show up on X-rays) or simple high explosives, ground or
air bursts (or jettisoned fuel tanks that hit Co Nguyen in the head
while she's fixing dinner) and the ghosts they made equal
the living bones from the times I played junior guardian angel.

So now it's time to go to The Wall and say "Hello" or
look a Vietnamese in the face and smile and
someone else can see which way my scales tilt.

Horace Coleman