Melanie C. Campos ~ MahTame

NO MEMORY OF BLOOD IN ‘NAM

He humped the jungle floor
the enemy all around them
snipers on both sides shoot
bullets flying all about him

Hearing the screaming men
hollering muffled amid fire
watching his buddy holding
his belly; then death retire

Shrapnel piercing their flesh
making holes and abrasions
nary a soul could escape this
battling of enemy occasions

Crawling and humping more
into the barricading safety
of their company battalion
hiding feelings of non-surety

He ne’er saw the blood bath
some forty years later still
no recollection of seeing that
a memory protecting at will

Knowing it was there, for sure
no odor of its decaying smell
cannot be recalled to this day
but he lives to know and retell

Young soldier then, older now
words of his time in the war
Vietnam added to his traumas
of life, death, horror and gore