Vietnam
SOME WOUNDS NEVER HEAL
“Who is she?” The policeman asked as he stood next to her feet.
“Just another homeless woman who died here in the street.”
“Does she have any friends or family?” he asked reeling from the smell.
“Not that anyone knows,” came the answer…”not that anyone can tell.”
“I hear she was a nurse in Vietnam”…another person said stopping to stare.
“She never said but I always wondered…what happened to her there.”
"But that war ended over 40 years ago!” the young policeman said,
“Surely there’s another reason this woman lies here dead!”
“There has to be another explanation…there’s got to be something more…
How can this old homeless woman be a casualty of that war?”
A man in tattered khakis limped over to the crowd
He saluted the homeless woman then stood up tall and proud…
“We hear a lot about men like me and Vietnam.” he said
“The horrors…the way we were treated…and it’s all true…
but forgotten are the he nurses who took care of us…
and the traumas they went through.”
“There is a painful truth about war…how its memories transcend…
“and just because a war is over…doesn’t mean the battle ends."
“Some of us can’t forget the agony and our pain…we can’t conceal.
“In some of us the suffering continues…some wounds will never heal.”
“Who was she another passerby asked?”
The policeman’s stood up proud and resolute.
She was a woman…a nurse…a soldier!” he said…
and he gave her a salute.
a man's living nightmare
Stormy, stormy ships quietly love a cold, lively sail.
*36 Short Poems To the Peace Of Which We Are All Formed (revised)
*1*
He was alive because on that day
in Niigata the skies were gray *
(Niigata was the original target of the Truman atom bomb
but was rejected due to overcast skies)
*2*
Those who tried to colonize Vietnam
have written on water.
*3*
61 died that day in the 1st infantry in Vietnam. Rows of bodybags, the
fruit of war.. drying in noonday sun.
*4*
Oh God to You we give thanks... that in time Polish horses... defeat
Nazi tanks
*5*
How many have been blinded burned bombed or blown apart
by Hitler, Churchill, puppet presidents or Bonaparte?
*6*
Weary worker ants rest on moss pillows grown by the p u s s ywillows while a
family of ducks floats on lake billows
*7*
Pansies fringe the rusting panzers
*8*
Ivy and violets vy not with the violent.
*9*
As the unchanging blue waters of the lake reflect
the gold, crimson, pink and saffron of the changing fall
so the peaceful soul absorbs the ups and downs of those
in crisis in answer to God's call
*10*
Above a battle dark smokegrey and bloodcrimson in surprise
and silent contrast break pastels from the palate of sunrise.
*11*
The fruit tree groves of life randomly grow
but Arlington's deathbloom graves... are set in rows
*12*
a deep pool at every waterfall base
.. postcrisis waters of God's resting grace
Shakti has become shanti. Power has become peace
*13*
God is rearranging the stars into a special script for you...
a fortune cookie strip of joy. a secret message, a puzzle
solution.
*14*
There are the stars of purple framed night
streaming peace, pouring light
*15*
Some call war profiteer cartels
'the US' but we the people of America
from Sacramento to Schenectady
reject such lying syndecdoches
*16*
One by one in many countries they break through the ice of fear.. cups
of crocuses.. stand up in caucuses.. East to West from Africa to the
Caucusus and show their eternal allegiance to the maker of their sun:
Creator of all of us.
*17*
Those who wend their way on the opposite
side of the road are not our foes. Each stays within the
lines as peace on both sides goes.
*18*
One has to choose between bomber pilots' wings and the whirring help of angel wings
*19*
The wind lullabies the lilac looms and fireflies
*20*
As many like holy Uri Geller can with mindpower bend metal
so prayer and positive thought can defuse and melt weapons.
*21
Downward falsified: war's casualty statistics ... truth raped by aims sadistic
*22
Divine Mother Kwon Yin sometimes veils her beauty
that it not create fear in her children.. fear to approach her
*23
duplicate
*24
The storm was full of menacing dark clouds.. hard cold rain..treecleaving lightning ..
now it is over and in the twilight 3 rainbarrels brimful of rain.. shimmer in the starlit peace.
Atop them lattices of fallen leafy branch .. lifeboats for any country mice.
*25
Beneath the morning star jewel.. arrive arrayed in gold the beams of dawn..
and though their swordshafts appear each other to pierce.. with crossfire and conflicting dreams
.. because they are made of light, they merge
*26
When children are cremated by bombing their bodies' ashes require no enbalming
*27
These innocent children of the poor.. now soldiers with the whole world on their exploited shoulders.. some of whom need to be resoldered
*28
Nonviolent is the violet light which wakes us from the sleep of night. Gently comes the dawn's twilight each step taken oh so slight.
*29
Worse than pedophiles is pedocide, abstractly bombing children from Florida computers
*30
If a biologist teaches dissection is he a necrologist...
desensitizing teens to cruelty and killing, funneling them into
careers of animal carving, vivisection
*31
Above, heaven's fields are a flaming flamingo feather pink while below palm trees'
flaming fronds fall set with people and animals on fire by bombs
*32
a barberry bush with saffron leaves..... on its branches hang rows of crimson raindrops...
as if the bombing raids of the distant war had rained blood here
*33
He was not drafted to warships but summoned to worship.. not to soldiers' gassing
by 'friendly fire' but called to the Higher Fire
*34
Waves scalloped shield the scallops. Blue lips and cherrystones
protected hide by Neptune's throne.
*35
Francis of Assisi was termed a deserter because in the military he found he could not kill.
*36
The boundaries of political worlds were once determined by
angry seizures of would be Caesars
http://www.rjmatson.com/frames_RECENT.htm
Niigata was the first target selected, not Hiroshima nor Nagasaki
© Saiom Shriver
36
=====================================================
Polish Horses is to Alex Hershaft
(a student came up to JBO, an
American teacher of English
in Japan and told her he was born
on Aug 6,1945 in Niigata. Because
of overcast skies, Hiroshima was
selected as the 2nd target for
the only reported atom bomb
dropped on a human population) .
**
Ivy is to Wallace' and
Shana's daughter