Flash-Back: a Haunting
I see an Army combat friend who stands
alone in dim-lit shadows of a street-lamp's
yellow glow. A shared piece of history has now
arrived to tweak and trick my troubled mind.
I gaze through dusted haze of curtains stained
by painful years of shattered habits and regret.
There's long jagged cracks on alabaster bone -
like zippered seams cut clear across his skull.
I greet his hollow-socket stare and crooked gash
of toothless black now smiling back. His thin and
fallow brittle-bones begin to rattle as a long-dead
hand begins to slowly rise to make a haunted wave.
A voice, like rumbles from the jungle heat of war,
(fought fifty years ago) begins to speak:
" You left me there, my guts still spillin' out my
belly wound like vipers bursting forth from some old
Pentecostal's burlap bag full-packed with angry snakes.
I saw my bloody guts slippin' down into the muck,
melding with the stink of godforsaken jungle rot.
Why did you leave my carcass there - not carry me
away from all that filthy, fetid stench of sweated death? "
No answer that I give can make him live again
or understand I have no answer to the "why" and yet
I know he will return to ask again until one day I too
have reached my end.
Copyright © Tom Mcmurray | Year Posted 2021
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