Standing Post – Quang Nam Province — Da Nang – Viet Nam
-James W. Sincere – 11/15/1949-11/22/1968
-Quang Nam Province, Da Nang, Viet Nam
“…you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead…’
–Tim O’Brien — The Things They Carried
The old screen door’s rusty voice rattles awake somber memories.
A May dawn, still dark. I’m peaceful until the first insect
of spring shoots into the back of my neck. I grab it, toss it,
my calm ravaged by a single image of war.
I’m an old man now – it takes very little to dredge up that horror
marshalling itself in, dressed in black, still no concern for where it lands,
or even if such thoughts are welcomed here.
Remember the blur and fear of ’67, ’68, so many young men
leaving and not returning, disordering our minds into fiery anger?
And look how things never change-
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
and still they cover the world and will continue to until nothing is left.
Remember how we loved Macbeth, all that violence and blood.
We were so young – sixteen — that gory stuff was “awesome!”
Of course Dylan was our only choice if we were going to get high.
Oh man, we’d wail as loud as we could…
…Democracy don’t rule the world,
You’d better get that in your head; this world is ruled by violence.
But I guess that’s better left unsaid…
These days, the world feels more like desolation row,
and the line that sticks in my throat
every morning is Mac B again…
“I gin to grow aweary of the world…“
as I try to lift these degenerating bones from an old,
slumping mattress that would swallow me if it could,
and I’m not sure I’d resist.
Funny how we’d twist lyrics and lines until
we made them ours and fit them
into our chaotic and worried minds.
In fact, right now, I’m thinking
of another line from The Scottish Play–
“Full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!”
These days, that line just fits – no trying necessary
I cannot imagine your vicious exhaustion.
My sorrow is exquisite. But right now I need you,
just for a moment. Difficult I know. But please.
See, I keep wondering what we might have talked about
when you came home. Do you think you would have told me about
the flame tree, the Dragon Fruit, the Cannonball tree…
…Vietnamese miracles in hell.
In a letter you spoke about the tress – you said
they’re more “…beautiful the more shredded they get…”
That made me believe you must have been standing stock still,
the black jungle just a few feet behind you-
in front of you the finest white sand of the Song Han River
in Da Nang, flowing into the East Viet Nam Sea.
I know you were enchanted by this exotic grandeur.
I know you. I know you were. On the other hand…
…the only thing I could think was that this miraculous splendor
would be a fatal distraction. I worried about the trills and lisps
of unfamiliar insects and birds, the ripples of the Song Han
all sparkling sapphires and the clacking of stones,
wind through wild fox tail, and there, suddenly, the tree of luck-
-the Cay Quat, playing a canticle of mercy along its delicate reeds.
I knew this enchanting place would get to you and distract you
from your appointed duties, though maybe I have it all wrong.
Maybe you had only one thought – Guard Duty!
with its orders of silence, stasis, prefect focus.
I get it – but I also know you were rapt by all this alien beauty.
I can’t say for sure, but perhaps, under the spell of elegance,
dread got to you – were you blinded, paralyzed ?
Each time panic slithered up your back, did you think more clearly,
or did the racket of a fire fight muddle your brain?
A galaxy of patinas gleamed on the massive river – Song Han…
“City at the beginning of the sea and the end of the river…”
How seductive that shimmering river – a sacrament of security
that blessed the black jungle where you were the supple demarcation.
James, is there a warning when Death is on the wing?
When we were kids, we were taught war, death, pain.
We practiced safety under our desks, the delight in trying
to hold in laughter, our giggles only getting louder.
Such innocence, hiding from the world’s end under an old desk,
our laughter a hymn against things we could not imagine.
Open darkness no matter how black stops nothing!
That single image of war I spoke of earlier, is you, James.
It has been on a loop in my head for 60 years.
I imagine that for a fraction of a moment you were dazed,
but instantly the thinnest sliver of light became an evanescent
thought that, had it not vanished instantly, might have been about
the glory and the revulsion of that place.
But there was no time for even the slightest hint of breath,
the gasp of a single syllable, before you fell to the sand.
Oh, James, Dearest Brother,
when that single AK-47-7.62mm bullet
crashed through the back of your nineteen-year-old neck,
and you lay face down on the soft sand of the Song Han,
you left me with a lifetime of questions,
and you departed, keeping to yourself
so many things you could never tell anyone.
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John Stanizzi’s (Johnnie’s)15th book – November. Titles – “Ecstasy Among Ghosts,” “Sleepwalking,” “Dance Against the Wall,” “After the Bell,” “Chants,” “High Tide-Ebb Tide,” “4 Bits,” “Hallelujah Time,” “POND,” “Tree That Lights the Way Home,” “Sundowning,” “Feathers and Bones,” and “SEE.” Besides Stone Poetry Quarterly, Johnnie’s in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, Cortland Review, many others. CNF in – Potato Soup, Evening Street, many others. CNF piece, “Pants,” named best of 2021. A New England Poet of the Year & Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, Johnnie received a Fellowship – CNF -‘21. Best of the Net nominee, nominee for Poet Laureate for the State of CT. – 28 years -Manchester CT. Community College. www.johnlstanizzi.com.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 