Mom's Apple Pie
by L.J. Palardy
You lie in the green elephant grass
trying to make yourself invisible
to incoming fire.
Time begins to stand still.
How has it been since
this fire fight started?
Ten seconds, twenty minutes,
thirty minutes, forty hours,
an eternity.
You don't move or
you become a target.
The guy who shared a whore
with you last night, lays
eighteen inches
from your shaking
body. You use his stilled
form as a shield. You peer
into a fist-sized exit
wound below his shoulder blade, it oozes,
first, bright red blood, then
turning dark purple in the jungle heat,
eventually crusting to black.
When you die, you lose body functions;
it's the same when you're scared.
Dark brown shit stains your buddy's fatigue pants,
yellow piss stains yours.
A brave medic works on the victim of
a booby-trapped artillery shell.
A small amount of semen
flows out of the end of his penis,
like a last grasp at immortality.
Armies of small red ants march toward
the caked blood, shit, piss, and semen,
the only victors in war.
White phosphorus and napalm bombs,
dropped by F-105's,
add white and black clouds to the roof of the jungle.
Finally only the dead
and the living are left.
The peaceful quiet is interrupted by the thumping of
helicopter rotary blades.
Like red, white and blue Swift's Meat trucks,
they carry both dead and survivors away
for delivery.
You are finally free.
In Frisco, civilians spit and call you
killers of women and children.
Who was at the end of your weapon,
doesn't mean jack shit.
After serving eleven months and twenty-nine days
in combat,
you'd pull the trigger on your own mother.
Nobody fought for mom's apple pie here.
You fucking A well did anything you could
to get out of hell.