Falluja

Sand blows across your boots
sharply raking your cornea
scraping your brain
arid is your heart
dry is your mouth
as voiceless sounds scratch
at your throat
wanting expression
with no escape.

Small dead hands
bleed in your dreams
breaking your innocence
as you weep for loss
into the night sky
with it’s ceaseless fire
it endows your sleeplessness.

One day you
will come home
the fires will wane
with hope
you will mend
where the earth
is not yet parched
your throat
no longer dry
you will walk
among pines
observe birds
standing in water
touch hands of
little ones
skipping stones
across streams
in joyful play.

You will see birds
high on the wing
leaking no jet fuel
but feathered in peace
you will lay down
your dreams change as
little pink fingers
grasp your thumbs in love.

Posted at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads – Open Link Monday.
© Liz Rice-Sosne

writing combat ptsd

at this table
this quiet place
where they write
this flat surface
where poetry
spills
for the hungry ones
those
who wish to leave
their wars
behind
where recidivism
is high
where
eyes are glazed
stares penetrating
where
nothing is
given away
not even longing
empty bodies
hollowed
anger
in a
fog
they write

Copyright Liz Rice Sosne 09/30/2013
Dedicated to those veterans who saw combat and who were in my writing classes.

Placed at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads for Open Link Monday.

Damn Vietnam

War really, really screws with the senses, the emotions, the body, the mind and everything else of which we humans are made. It destroys and contorts, it turns inside out, it twists and slices the emotions and the soul. When done with war if you are alive you are a different human being.

Can you? Do you go forward as this new you? Can you go back to being who you once were? No. Never. And this because you are now a different man or woman. But all of the hell that you have lived through can be chewed over and re-digested into something positive with very hard work. I tried unsuccessfully to place this at dVerse for Memorial Day. And, although not explicitly true to today’s theme – in reality it is. Found at dVerse for Synesthesia–Sensory Confusion, or…? dVerse Meeting the Bar.

Damn Vietnam

you have been home
some forty years
your rifle
under your pillow
each night
while you fire away in your sleep
I wonder why
for the war is over

Damn Vietnam

but it
is not over
no
it is 1966
all over again
the NVA
has just crossed the
DMZ
you are in the middle
of the biggest battle yet
five thousand
marines
you head north
Operation Hastings
Dong Ha
you have
arrived in hell
warships
and air power drive
them back
finally, after so many
are
lost

Damn Vietnam

you say nothing
until the whiskey
burns your throat
and the rage begins
its long climb up
as you attempt to
vomit out your hell
your war still there
on the surface
anger roiling
through your blood
you should be asleep old man
but your wounds are
deep

Damn Vietnam

last night looking up
into the trees
clouds sailing
across the moon
crows speaking
I listened
while they spoke
of knowledge
of wisdom
of healing that would come
to my brothers
who were there

Damn Vietnam

Posted at dVerse for Memorial Day in Pretzels and Bullfights – see the wonderful article by Laurie Kolp. Well, this is not quite true. I did not find a link to actually publish. It might be coming later. But do read Laurie’s article.