Christmas in Vietnam

1964 - Second Tour
 
Christmas lights in Vietnam  
were automatic weapon fire  
 
blinking within the perimeter;  
While back home in America  
 
I broke the leg of my first Barbie  
bending it too far back, my cow-  
 
licked pixie at morning attention  
transmitting code-aviation across  
 
a cracked oatmeal bowl, a crippled  
doll, a divided country, an ocean,  
 
a continent, a gulf, a peninsula,  
and Cambodian border to intercept  
 
and slit the throats of ricocheted  
bullets fiercely craning their knives  
 
for my father, who was looking out  
over a munition's crate desk  
 
from his makeshift tent while writing  
me about duty and love, his feet  
 
rotting from jungle and words  
trailing with irony at the beauty  
 
of sparklers hopping toward him  
like a warm holiday memory;
 
Or, childhood nightmare of captured  
fireflies: forgotten POW's dying  
 
in a foreign country of glass jar  
beneath dirty clothes on his bedroom floor.    
 
~