1968 Disturbed

The infant doesn’t know
But the pain his father carries
With him is full of death
The memories don’t fade.

At two, the little boy recognizes
His father has changed.
Carrying a burden of darkness
Full of dread.
Distracted by the mounds of dead.

Eyes dart towards his son of five.
Uncontrollable, volatile, unpredictable.
Anger and violence welling inside
A dirty little secret is held close.

To have started the fires and silenced the moans.

Missing limbs and broken bones
Surviving through the death groans.
He sees a boy of ten
Anxious for his father to leave and go to work.

For this disturbed soul to be gone.

The trench of distance deepens
As the boy waves good bye to this stranger of a man
A son for a father is traded away as he
Cries from within for his father’s sins.

All grown up and a soldier too
His son leaves home to make his father proud
To a world of lost daughters and sons
Whose fathers crept through rice paddies with guns.

Don’t forget your morphine shot in case you get caught.

Jungles of land mines, flanked to your right.
Another soldier is lost in this fight.