Flash Backs II
Crawling through the dense underbrush
sound is muffled yet amplified
by our terror. Behind me a soft metallic ping
followed by an echoing thump
sounding like a small tree limb dropping
.
I turn my head slightly, get spattered
by blood surging from his decapitated
body. My friend, patrol mate without
his head! He’s trying to push up in the road.
Hands positioned, left leg splayed trying
to stabilize in the bloody dirt. His head
is missing. Right leg flexes then kicks
back, once twice trying to gain traction.
Dead yet moving. Me immobilized alive.
Slowly his body starts listing
left until it rests on his shoulder.
Gurgling sounds from his bloody neck
seems deafening, seems to fill
the entire canopy. In reality only
small pops and swooshes like
a deflating balloon come from
his body. A new effort to raise
himself then a final tremor.
In twenty seconds, forty at most,
a dance of death. His head is gone.
I’m screaming yet no sound emerges.
Bang the road with fists of rage.
Tears erupt yet no sound emerges.
I do hear fast footfalls slapping
their way through the underbrush.
Then all is silent except my screaming
body trying to voice fear, anguish, loss,
uncertainty. What’s burned into my
psyche is no longer his face, but that
headless body trying to stand.
It doesn’t leave me. In movie houses,
in dark apartment buildings, but also
in glass strewn lots where I played
baseball as a kid, on Central Park
walks the scene drenches me in sweat
then wrings me out so I’m cursing
at joggers, looking for rocks to toss
like hand grenades at strangers.
Where’s my piece? It’s sitting back
there, on the bloody ‘Nam road.
Night’s are the worst. Dreaming,
me enclosed in a canister filling with my tears.
Awaking, I wonder aloud, who can I tell this too?
No one, who hasn’t been there.
the canopy
