Horace Coleman


Horace Coleman is a Vietnam veteran "class of '67"--0-1/0-2, MOS 1741 (weapons director/interceptor controller--air traffic controller.) He is the author of IN THE GRASS published by Vietnam Generation, Inc. & Burning Cities Press. Horace Coleman has also been published elsewhere on the Web as well as in a number of periodicals and anthologies including CARRYING THE DARKNESS edited by W.D. Ehrhart. In addition to being a poet and writer, he is a former university professor, writer-in-residence, and technical writer.


CRACKS IN THE WALL

 

It's not even symbolic--
The Wall has "structural weaknesses"
(lines of stress in its facade).
Why should the monument
be less flawed, more soundly made,
than the war, the country's feelings,
individual opinions or
the warriors' reception?
Maybe all those tears eroded it.
Something's been undermined.
I got cracks in my walls and
I won't even tell you
where they were made.
Puller's kid could have said
"The war's not over
until the last suicide.'
We know we built
as good as we could.
What's wrong with
a stone liberty Bell?


TALKING AND TOKING


One spring morning,
going across campus late,
I smelled them before I saw them:
a short, black, red-eyed dude;
a tall, Jesus-hippie looking, white one.
I joined the ex-Lurps
and we puffed
on our way to class

(never mind they were taking one
and I was teaching one).

Told me how he used to patrol
moving north, in the DMZ.
"See you in 30 days!"
the crew chief would shout
on his relieved way out.

"Got sent back so many time,
I couldn't decide who was
trying harder to kill me!"

Once, fifteen days out,
they got ambushed.
When the led rain let up,
8 white bodies
floated on the ground.

The chopper didn't want to pick up
the two black survivors--
had the MPs waiting.
The bounty hat was passed before
the second patrol found AK-47 brass.
Transferred the blacks out--
to keep them alive and
hold down trouble.
Ruined morale and made
the "1,000 yard stares" longer.

Somebody knew America real well.


OK CORRAL EAST

Brothers in The Nam
Sgt Christopher and I are in Khanh Hoi,
down by the docks in the blues Bar.
The women are brown and there is no "Saigon Tea."
We're making our nightly HIT ('Hore Inspection Tour),
watching the black inside and out, digging night sights,
soul sounds and getting tight.

The grunts in the corner raise undisturbed hell
as the timid MP's freckles pale.
He walks past the dude high in the doorway,
in his lavender jump suit, to ask the mamma-san,
quietly, about curfew.

He chokes on the weed smoke as
he sees nothing his color here and
he fingers his army rosary--his .45.

But this is not Cleveland or Chicago;
he makes no one here cringe and
our gazes, like punji stakes, impale him.

We have all killed something recently,
know who owns the night,
and carry darkness with us.


EXILED IN AMERICA

We are the oil,
the precious pressured residue
squeezed out of history.
We are the ones who practice
life astride the knife.
We are numbed by sharp indifference
as the blade turns slowly up.
We are the skinny dreams
that shred fat sleep.
We are the unseen stare raising neck hair,
the wronged, the right,
We are the wind & rain that crack rocks
the pain that birth unlocks.
We are the oil, soothing
the slow flow of freedom,
moving the earth.
We are.


FLASH-------
(ode to "civilians")



Well, I finally had that dream.
You know, the silent
vividly colored
real slow motion one
where you watch yourself
be part of The Way Wild Bunch?
I've got new fatigues
(already spotted with potent perfume):
0800 sweat, gun oil, dried blood,
human manure (from rice paddies),
rotten fish sauce that had
oozed down a hot runway
and onto me
(like someone getting "spilled").
fear-stink and eau de cordit
wrinkle noses on dead faces
whiffing themselves
as if it was whiskey.
A toke from a Thai stick, maybe,
a "shotgun" from a shotgun
or a brew could clear all that up
--for a New York minute.
And I'm hitting everything I'm aiming at
The Mattel Shoot 'N' Shell
doesn't need a thumb extractor today.
The fighters are almost on target and
the LT almost read the map right.
Like we almost have
the right strategy (and politics).
not that it really makes any difference.
I'm wasting every one--reticent men,
defiant women, resigned old people
semi-innocent children.
And, all the "slopes," "dinks" and "zips"
have round eyes.


FORWARD
(ode to "civilians")



Especially the burning coed who says,
in her California accent,
"How come you Vietnam vets
are so cazy?" So I tell her
"Because people like you
ask questions like that!"
Then I give her half a magazine
to read with her half a mind
until she has half a body.

Now I don't worry about going to sleep
(and waking up in pieces or not at all
or just waking up),
blowing my warm cool and
killing someone accidentally
instead of on purpose.
One piece of peace cures
a lot when I finally admit
who and what
the real "enemy" is:

The grunts said
(is it still true two and
a half decades later?)
"It don't mean nothing!"
All I know is, war is
not a metaphor for,
a style of,
or a symbol for,
life.
"Get your ass in the grass!,"
like the sergeant said,
And I have too,
write my own orders,
make my own meanings.