Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time,
I stepped out of a canvas covered
hospital ward onto red powdered dirt 
stretching eventless to deadly
dragonflys dozing on a heli-pad and that
dusted the black and green boots I wore. 
The reek of shit bubbling in a stew
of burning aviation fuel clawed at my eyes.
I coughed to clear the suffocating sweetness 
of bandages and fermenting blood out of 
my throat while I stood in that blazing sun.
Sweat blossomed in a birth of needles through
my skin while the heat hammered 
out a searing mask and jammed it,
red-gold, over my face.
I blinked,squinted through
eye slits and saw
you.


You surely have forgotten
by now, but then
you were wearing a heavy metal pot,
the Ace of Spades slid under the band
holding on the camouflage cloth.
Sweat cleared tracks through
the red dust clinging to your
cheeks and found its way
to the green towel draped 
around your neck, just
as the statue by the
Wall has it.


Your left hand was wrapped in white,
a smashed finger equaling
a day off the hump to you so you felt
sociable. You
showed me the "love" and the "hate",
one to each hand,
and told me how short you were
(ten and a wake-up) and
how you'd blown up an old woman,
ripe tomato and a broomstick,
red mist in the air, and
I haven't been able to forget you, you know, or
the green moss on your teeth, or
the way your lips cracked and bled when
you laughed.