in memory
edward ‘jack’ waer
1936 – 2010
‘crazy jack’, c.j., brother jack’s
going to the wall today
that black memorial
vietnam wall
the one just off the mall
in lincoln’s shadow
down there in d.c.
once upon a long,
long time ago
at barely sixteen years young
fresh from the war zone
of newark’s streets
and not so safely away
from the hanging judge
who sent him there,
(it’s a long and longer story,
mostly about running numbers,
hot-wired cars and juvie crime,
anyway, 32 counts,
‘coulda been more’, so
‘enlist today or the trenton pen’)
jack finds himself
in the army
(but without basic,
not yet trained to kill
or stay alive)
in a war, a real shooting war
or maybe not
just a ‘police action’
or maybe not,
facing angry asians
hand-to-hand
at kaesong (in north korea)
where he lost sixteen teeth,
(one for each year of his age)
to an enemy rifle butt
and took a .30 caliber round
in his young ass
(47 stitches)
during his only seventeen hours
‘in country’ in that un-war
that sure felt like one
then at seventeen he jumped
with a ranger team
into điên biên phu
(just like hell, but việt nam)
another war, or maybe not,
to spend five months
there with the french
until almost the end
when it all fell
into the mud and blood
that ended one war
and marked the start
of another one
(or maybe not another,
but just more of the same)
fourteen years later,
the year of the monkey,
older, maybe wiser,
maybe not
(same việt nam, but another war
or maybe not)
his prisoner said,
‘you’ll die today’ and,
as though on cue,
he barely survived the rocket round
that nearly did him in
and killed the prophet prisoner
in dank phú bài’s exburb, huế
that was in sixty-eight
the year of the monkey,
the vietnamese new year
tết mậu thân,
you may know the one
or, at least, remember it,
even if…maybe,
no, maybe not
he collected six purple hearts
in twenty years
and lived to tell all the stories
and then some and more
but, now, today
he’s says that he’s just scared
twenty five years
after that last war,
almost fifty since his first,
but he’s going to the wall
today, for the first time, his last,
guessing that he won’t be back
he’s nervous, scared,
afraid that he can’s take it,
won’t make it
there with all the names,
the ghosted souls of
so many dead
so many that he knew
so many who were friends,
so many so long dead
so many,
‘just so goddamned many’
he’s going to the wall today, but
he’s scared (shitless, he says),
and he has the shakes
worse, he says,
than a whore in church
or anything in those wars of his
(except, maybe, he says, kaesong)
and, maybe even worse than
that one time way back when
once upon a time in newark, and
he was just a skinny kid,
he got his first piece of ass
(that’s what he says)
but still, he’s going to the wall
today
anyway, so…
me and the brothers, ralph and hal,
took jack, ‘crazy jack’, to the wall
one place he dreads to go alone
this first time, his last, to visit
his long dead friends whose names echo
memory’s ghosts behind black stone
he wants to leave a memento
there at the wall for his best friend
who died one day in sixty eight
just an ancient bayonet, but
he won’t share its significance
or why he has to leave it there
and so we go and jack’s all tears
the brothers have to hold him up
six purple hearts in twenty years
but this black wall and all those names
have dropped him, knocked him to his knees
and he leans on it for support
he moves his hand across a name
and gently lays the bayonet
below his own reflection there
before the ghosts behind the wall
a too personal communion
between the living and the dead
but there’s a guy off to one side
who’s standing, watching with his son
a boy who couldn’t be thirteen
looking up and back down the wall
like holdup men casing a store
but focused on jack’s bayonet
jack stands up, he’s steadier now
even though he’s a whiter pale,
and his stare’s at a thousand yards
but it’s time, he says, for a drink
or maybe some more with the guys,
to toast, remembering lost friends
as we walked away, glancing back,
the father signaled to his son
who slithered over to the wall
and light-fingered the bayonet
with a shoplifter’s skill, for ‘dad’,
who stashed it away with a grin
distracted, jack missed the drama
as we retrieved the bayonet
and chased the scavengers away
there could have been blood on the wall
(mightn’t have been our jack’s first kill)
had he seen the attempted theft
how dulce et decorum est,
this cold reminder at the wall
that whether here, or vietnam
cowards delegate dirty work
(in ‘noble cause’ for ‘greater good’)
and fathers sometimes betray sons
First published in vietnamfulldisclosure.org 2016
© John Buquoi 2016 Reprinted with kind permission of the author