I walk in a wilderness
Of raw emotion
And feral thoughts
Constricting my chest
In a relentless vice
Unique calls
Echo in silence
Turning me deaf
And the shadows
Assault my eyes
Hiding in the blind spot.
My mind is *****
And my body is ravaged
The hollow knock
On an empty box
And somehow
I am home

I saw
an old man
kneeling
on the side
of the road
the other day.

I stopped
to ask
if I could
help in
any way.

I could
see him
flap his arms,
hear him
mutter
and pray.

"There is
no help,"
he shouted.
"Be on
your way!"

I left then
because
I was afraid
that should
I stay,

I might begin
to kneel,
to flap
my arms,
to mutter
and to pray.
  - mce

I didn't know him well.
I was only just twenty.
He was the first Indian
I had ever met though
he called himself a Skin.
Came from northern Nebraska.
He was tall, strong, quiet
and soft spoken
with a strange authority.
Somehow, he could sense fear.
At the end of the first day
over An Loc I was
well beyond fear, beyond
terrified, barely functional.
While we refueled
he came over and told me
not to worry. Every day,
he said, was a good day to die.
First time I ever heard
Crazy Horse's famous phrase.
In the morning, his waddling,
overloaded chopper took
a SAM missile up the ***
and totally disintegrated:
no wreckage, no bodies,
no anything left at all.
There's nothing
really left to say
except I hope that for him
it was a very good day.

  ~mce