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He stands beside this long   black   granite wall
broken lines   accentuated reflection   recalled names

It is here where he realized
that intranquility of redemption, even of prayer's forgiveness,
he do not own it any more than he owned heaven  

there being no clearing of one's debts here upon it's mirrored surface.

It is here   in chiseled silence    that he recalled
just when and where he met himself for the first time
among the scarred remains of the killing-fields

where young men grew old far too quickly,  
far from the banana boats   skipping upstream   the tributaries of the Mekong Delta.

In a rice bowl, horror steamed   crop circles of paddy fields   jungles tangled
within mind's greatest intrinsic fear
 
death.

It lay visible near pothered doors
where once stood life's vessels -  unbroken, now carnage   without vestige
of honor, standing unhinged, doors singed, crippled with every breath unnerved,

reduced now   here   unspoken   to names  
only
this is where murder is not reserved
solely for murderers   many were faced   without honor
within this stone their internment. 

As for others, they returned home

invisible

ravaged   each night a memory of unhinged doors   their un-sutured wounds
opening without knocking   entering without leaving   unforgotten
fears of cleaving sanctity undeserved
here
where there is no vetted self-reflection, only sweat and the tremor of dream's
recollected and fractured surfaces   of soul   stilled   distilled   dying a
thousand times a night   each night   each day   unceremoniously

hell reduced to living in heavenly reproach.





(April 24 2016)

*Not for contest...but post inspired by.

*Unceremoniously, 366 blue plastic capsules containing the birthdays that would be chosen in the first Vietnam draft lottery were drawn on December 1, 1969. There were NO winners. I was one among them. The war had been going on for several years before. A black granite memorial wall was built in Washington D.C. to the veterans of the VIET NAM WAR with the names of the fallen engraved upon and was completed in 1982. Other than this...most are still invisible.
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