Dana L. Turk

some info not contained in behavioral medicine or psych? blesssindgs mudman johnson m.u.d.

Lunch

He came to lunch with me today the Vietnamese boy
sat at the table on my left, as he always does
and my hand trembled as I tried to eat

I've never known his name odd, because
he's been around so long-twenty-four years
on the edges of my dreams,twenty-four years
a silent presence haunting the sleepless
early-morning hours that sometimes snatch me still
too-easily alarmed from sleep.

Fourteen years, maybe fifteen, (hard to tell with all the blood),
beatified with fierce pride of new manhood,
childhood innocence burnished by war
to a hard metallic sheen.
I've come to love him, this boy so like myself,
but still my hand trembled as I raised my cup to drink.
He didn't eat,(he never does)

Just watched me (as he always does)
never speaking, watched me
silent through his pain.

Silent since that dark and early-morning hour
twenty-four years ago, jungle-dark and early-morning hour
when he cried out in warning to his brothers
as we lay tense and trembling, he and I,
trapped in bloody embrace in the fear-kissed dark
of the killing field, cries out again in warning and in pain
as I put one hand over the hole in his gut to stop the blood,
one over his mouth to stop the cries.
He writhes, twisting from my touch, thrashes in shadow
as I reach again to silence his cries, our tortured dance
masking sounds of his brothers' advance,
painting us as targets in the dark—

And the hiss-whispered order flung with desperate urgency
from the darkness on my right: "Cut that slope’s throat!
Now!"
Shadow-fractured moonlight flows the cutting edge of knife I draw with bloody hand. “Please,” I whisper, “Don't”
lift my hand (“Please!”) from his lips
(“Please don’t!”) cries erupt anew
and I raise the blade and choose --

He's never cried out since,
nor laughed, this beautiful man-child warrior.
He simply watches me, like at lunch,
trying to talk, to chew, to swallow.
No longer seeking escape.
Trying only to control the trembling--

He came to lunch with me today,
and I don't mind so much any more.
Still,I wish I knew his name
so I could set him free--
You see you cannot kill someone
without becoming jailer to his soul.

Gordon Mustain