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Best Poems Written by Jw Nugent

Below are the all-time best Jw Nugent poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Christmas In the Plain of Reeds

CHRISTMAS IN THE PLAIN OF REEDS

Three on isolated holiday;
Cambodia on the horizon.
The reeds sway in the wind,
rippling like drifting snow,
their touch a ringing bell.
So close to the Border,
so far from Christmas,
so far from home.

.

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Changing of Years

CHANGING OF YEARS

The darkness overwhelms
sitting on an old com tower
well into the Plain of Reeds
watching for enemy movement
Using bunkers of a firebase
long deserted and long rotted
two bunkers remain intact
The ARVN are very frightened
their bunker re-enforced
We three not paying attention 
our bunker is the old TOC
holes show partial damage 
openings are our escape route
A canal is just below me
having a deep and fast current
yet moving with the ocean tides
even this close to Cambodia
The last second of this year
the night lights up with flares
a thin horizon in the distance
colour of base camps reflected
from Tay Ninh around to My Tho
A near perfect half circle projected
light from far away soldiers 
they paint a glimpse of civilisation
an impossible distance from us
the world feels light years away
I notice the darkness around us
we are outside the circle of light
outside every thing we know
Our location an envelope of space
infinitely stretching beyond hope
The flares now lost in a new year
darkness now melded together.  
our darkness is so much deeper
Our universe of this nothingness 
drawing those very dark thoughts
the World is gone and home gone
So hard to breathe this nothingness
I feel darkness penetrate my soul
inevitably the dark will overwhelm
will hold me regardless of new light
the darkness held forever in my soul

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Ptsd

PTSD

My nightmares are violent;
rifle jammed frustratingly dead,
broken stock useless as a club,
only a k-bar knife and free hand
reaching for those darting figures
leaping over my fighting hole.

The night terrors are far worse;
bolting upright out of deep sleep
screaming from hidden memories,
violence lost in the awakening,
these trauma never remembered
hidden so very deep in my psych.

My days and nights span endlessly
while sitting alone in an empty room,
sightless but seeing forty years ago,
no longer living in the relevant present
the past becomes my personal quagmire;
a Hell beyond address never resolved.
Coping with a forced duality of life
accomplishments become meaningless,
every success is infused with doubt,
past decisions are seen in darkness
and the future unnecessary unwanted,
the value of my life feels wasted.

Old thoughts and desires surface,
my death in Vietnam more merciful.
I lived while more deserving men died
those who may have avoided a faulty life
avoiding a repressed and cloistered mind;
how these feelings echo among Veterans.

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Remembering

REMEMBERING

Hot, heat is the first impression,
this is the one that lasts
three hundred and sixty five days.

From the portal of the freedom bird
a year stretches across the runway,
across the heated shimmering tarmac,
far out in the yet unseen jungle
and seems to go on forever;
for some this elemental view,
begets only fear and hardship,
or a near future of youth forever.

Cold, cool is the lasting impression
the one felt in black granite;
a roll call stretching to saddness.

Names nestled comfortably
surrounded by cool green grass,
cool trees coolly reflecting a pool,
and cool white monuments.

For those names etched in reverence
hot bitter tears calculate the reality;
those three hundred and sixty five days
for so many measured indeed forever.

We left behind in this mortal world
must work to put aside our pain
to meet our charge to live and love
for those brothers no longer
driven by the frailty of life.

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Essay On Drums

ESSAY ON DRUMS

The drum sounds slowly its cadence
the beat, beat, beat marks a march
and through the air reverberates.

The tramp of a company at quick time,
arms pumping with machine precision,
a rigid jerky movement of elbows.

The thump of rotating Huey blades
as they back stroke the air;
gingerly alighting on a hot LZ.

The staccato stutter of rifle fire
indiscriminately searching the earth
laughingly playing hard games of tag.

The grieving hearts at graveside
waiting the echoing bugle call
while the flag is ritually folded.

Sound slowly this cadence
for the eons of history
the drums of war reverberate.

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Attack

ATTACK

I can still see their faces
mouths open screaming silent screams
silenced by the loud barking 
of weapons, theirs and ours;
sudden explosions rendering moot
intensity of automatic fire.

They came out of the trees
running across the stream,
the dark forms bending grass,
their feet splashing water;
such detail of uniforms,
wrinkles and straps,
water spraying from their passage.

The trees behind posed an almost
pastoral backdrop of night shadows
cast in the warm glow of collective detonations;
Then the silence, sudden silence,
ears overwhelmed by cruel technology,
the breathless suffocation of adrenaline.

Darkness grew as senses dimmed,
the brightness of action fading;
there were bodies in the grass, 
lying still in the water,
under my muzzle, within touch.

So natural in their motionless state
rather than fading into darkness,
the bodies, no longer men glowed 
illuminated by the floodlights
of hate, fear, and remorse.

Hand stretching to my muzzle,
poised just mere inches away,
while I kept pulling the trigger
on a now dead weapon;
willing the rounds to fire
needing them for survival.

I died but still breathed
as a fickle moon glanced
and showed its dismissive light;
there was nothing but death,
the dead, ours, theirs, scattered
natural in their motionless state.

As I looked, my friend,
lay against the embankment,
he unknowingly met my glance,
while light faded from his eyes;
his blue eyes kept watching
and his face calmly smiled.

The moon fluttered then gone,
rain came in whispering,
my sense of loss overwhelming;
alone now I could only grieve
their death and that of the living.

Ever so gently the Monsoon
whispers its condolence;
the gentle fall of water
cleansing my brutality
forgiving me my hate.
Gradually darkening my vision
night regained control.

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Home

HOME

The family is very excited
happy to see me come home
they know I have changed,
but they have changed as well.

Their eyes are worried wary,
their expressions oddly strained
here the uncertainty lingers,
behind their welcoming smiles.

Their war plays on TV nightly
they want life to be as it was
they want to see their other son
the familiar son who left home.

Those who already came home 
had no chance to be successful; 
the growing war protest attitude
have made jobs impossible to find.

Home coming joy fades quickly,
reclaiming my place not possible, 
most people avoid the stain of contact;
many others remain openly hostile

Survival means staying invisible
all that has happened locked in,
no one from home willing to talk,
childhood friends now turn away.

The painful memories come by day,
but the pain is worse at night,
agony grows beyond endurance
and continues to grow relentlessly.

This hidden hurt happens in silence
the mind tortured ready to break;
home the new Hell replacing Vietnam,
home will never be home, never again.

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Belief

BELIEF

Hard to breathe 
in this crystalline air
I can feel it’s sharpness.
Nights are seldom pleasant
almost always dangerous.
Charles moves at night
dug in we wait for the attack.
We ceded the night to them;
now laying here listening,
straining to hear movement,
afraid of my loud heartbeat
worried it will give me away.
This has become my world
and uncertainty is common.
Tonight I can taste the tension  
we are isolated, me and a scout,
each also alone in thought’s,
loneliness of heart and soul.
Are they searching for us,
or just moving their supplies,
this constant flow of people?
The radio’s antenna has failed
we can hear others talking
our radio cannot talk to them.
Two men forgotten and lost
sinking into our private worlds.
For me the night is all I have
dawn is far away, too far,
as is the light of the world I left.
I realise I probably will die tonight
this night will become the last.
Tension has grown to breaking
yet I pray in these moments,
hopeless moments, of straining life;  
in these last precious moments
just know that I believe.

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Brutality

Brutality

Ambushed outside a village
some of the enemy were killed
their bodies tied to our tracks
to drag back trough the village
there to stay as a warning;
our unit should not be attacked.

Some tracks were decorated
in a war like gruesome splendour
by using polished human skulls
as were the doorways of bunkers
and skulls used as mugs for beer;
death always a close companion.

There was the rumour of ears
gathered to use as necklaces,
or that some collected gold;
the heat and fear dulling reason
as a relentless war took hold,
numbing emotions, building anger.

Playing cards as calling cards
placed on the recently killed;
killed courtesy of “the unit.”
Endless tension day and night
constantly draining our humanity
allowing brutality to take hold.

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Nightmares

NIGHTMARES

The rain falls steadily
in comfortable cadence,
constant sound of water
falling in lulling song;
this Saturday morning
singing, stay and sleep,
a willing captive of rain
with its alluring melody.

The house begins to wake,
sleepy sisters and brothers
voices grumbling in protest,
scraping  of kitchen chairs,
clink of ready coffee cups;
father asking for breakfast,
mother singing April showers
and spritzing those in bed.

The spritzing is uncomfortable
a rough spray of cold water
cold enough bringing shivers
now wet, cold, and shaking;
blanket feeling soaked through,
mattress hard and uneven,
voices fading from the rain
the rain now in the house.

None of this moment feels right
then that harsh rip of lightening,
home suddenly snapping away,
the monsoon coming in hard
and a realisation of where;
not home now irretrievable, 
me on the ground in the rain,
painfully, fully, back in Vietnam.