The Grunts Dream

By Bo Sirant, 2012 (dedicated to the late Roman Kupchinsky) The grunt lay there Down and low In the brush by the river Where wild orchids grow Still and silent At his ambush post He was patient-Waiting for the VC host On matted reeds and hay he lay Like a tiger crouching in its lair Sniffing for the scent of prey In the humid jungle air He rested covered and concealed By the tangled, creeping vines Near a well-trod, muddy trail Laced with booby-traps and mines There he waited for a brush With an elusive, black-clad foe Who is Master of the Bush? He knew he soon would know He tensed himself rock-like stiff Then became relaxed and slack Then stiff and slack again He shifted his weight Sloth-like, and oh, so slow He was restless and itchy His muscles were fickle Numb, tingly, twitchy He felt tics and tremors Subtle shakes and tiny trembles Was soaked from head to toe Yet stayed still With barely a squirm Or a desperate wiggle And for a long time Felt the sweat trickle Down his cheeks and Back of the neck And the small of his back He lay watching the stretch Of meandering stream The downed gnarled trees

The eddies, whorls, and ripples And standing waves Pools and riffles Dunes and antidunes (into which only an hour ago He had sunk fully dressed To wash away his scent And then rolled In the sand, mud, and leaves And smudged his face With dirt and charcoal All over and festooned himself With leafy branches Grass and clover For camouflage and cover) He looked down Through the clear cool water To see spangled fish Like the speckled trout back home Darting in the dark blue shadows Down in the pool below him, Between the stippled rocks Camouflaged against the silt And pebbles and The sweeping swaying grasses Near the shore Where the long curved reeds Lithe and lax Looked oddly bent By the parallax A thin mist like smoke Hung above the rushing water He could feel the jungle He could taste the jungle He could smell the jungle The eternal jungle The infernal jungle The fungal rot, The spirits spent The fetid spoils Of bodies rent The strangling flora The sodden soils The fearsome fauna Odors carrion coarse and Fragrances orchid fine

He heard the waters gurgle Murmur and the babble Tree top chitter and the twitter He heard the distant cannons thunder He heard the blasts and rumble And the carpet bombing wonder On the verdant hills and ridges yonder The long varoom of B-52s dropping tons Of encapsulated woe In one long and staggered apocalyptic row Tearing countryside asunder Blow by blow Riven earth and splintered forest Hurled and thrown Fiery bloom and mushroom Kaboom after kaboom Powder fumes and smoky plumes The phosphoric starbursts The hellish pyrotechnic show Spark, blaze and eerie glow And imagined the fireballs and Napalm infernos throw up Choking black plumes Of greasy sooty smoke That grew into drifting, dense and Dark clouds looming on the horizon He was at one with this war And at one with the back country The hills, ravines and dingles Its undergrowth and tangles Where living things vied to live By ruthless and relentless struggle Its mysteries and verdant vastness Scared him and made him humble As did its ferocious power to destroy The distracted and the careless Those who muddle, err and bungle Those who trip and those who stumble Those too slow and those who trundle And he feared its denizens Everything that walked, stalked, flew Fluttered and flapped Wriggled, crawled, and dangled Bit, stung, and sucked And he feared the mines and booby traps

Sharp-staked pitfalls and The shit-laced punji traps And the sequelae The bacteria, the malaria, The diphtheria, typhoid, and gangrene The panic and hysteria And then he felt a presence He felt watched He scanned the opposite bank Looking for anything out of place Or different from a moment ago He was tired He wanted to sleep But he stayed alert because he knew that To sleep was to die And that the lives of his buddies Depended on him staying awake So he looked hard and deep Into the long late afternoon shadows Into the underbrush And he listened hard To try and hear any human sounds The sounds of the enemy Above the rush of the river And the sounds of the quiet jungle It was hard work He caught himself nodding off And he pinched himself hard And rubbed spit on his eyelids To keep himself awake Then, to his astonishment He saw an old Indian in buckskins And wearing a Glengarry cap And campaign medals Paddle up toward him Pull up the canoe And gracefully get out Hello, he said Hell, I didnt expect to see you here How could you be here? This is Vietnam Really, how could you be here? Dont worry about that son

Im but a dream within a dream your having And I have come to give you advice And to foretell your future What do you mean? Well, you will endure And survive this war And even though You want to go home You cant resist its lure You are addicted to its pull And there is no cure But to give in You will be wise in warrior ways A survivor And a saviour Its in the cards Youll sign up for a second tour And win bronze stars And purple hearts And save your pards Because of the knowledge I will give you How would you know that? I know those things Because Im God God? Come on! You look like old Tom My grandfathers favorite Indian guide Up in northern Canada At Eureka, a bush camp On the Opasatika Didnt your grandfather trust him with his life? And with your life? Yes, Tom saved his life. Well, I wanted to look like someone You could trust So thats why I came looking

Like Tom, in a traditional outfit With Toms smile And hearty laugh And fit to portage A good five miles My vocabularys better than Toms though Do you like these fringed buckskins? And how about this birch bark canoe And these hand hewn paddles? And how about these beaded moccasins? And this Damascus steel knife? And this rattlesnake skin sheath? And this necklace of grizzly teeth? Its all traditional Cree handicraft Well, sure They look authentic alright, and The beadwork on your jacket Is beautiful and bright Its all an illusion You wouldnt be able to really know me. I am something No human can fathom I show myself to different people In different ways Yet, I am in every atom Of those trees on the other side In this grass In the water that flows In the rocks, and In every cell of your body In the fish below I am in all matter And in all phenomena From the tiniest of the tiny To the grandest of the grand I am brighter than a billion suns Indestructible and irreducible Without beginning or end And any man trying to know me Is like a mouse trying to understand A res eterna or Binary codes of zeros and ones Linear algebra Advanced calculus

Geodesic trigonometry Astrophysics Or the physics of relativity Have you noticed that The stream has stopped flowing And that except for us Everything is suspended and frozen still? Yes! Holy Mackerel! My God! Thats incredible! See, I have made time stop around us But that is an illusion too OK what else should I know? There is no hurry, so go slow You will marry a beautiful woman, Roxana You wont have to find her Shell find you Shell come from Atlanta And you will have a son, Dan Who will become a great man Hell look up to you And be your greatest fan Your wife will die before you do You wont know exactly when So be good to her at all times Remember, no one can say If they will live To see the next day Except you and a few others I have told Your are very fit now, But will get fat After you leave the service Youll be burly like a bear And wear whiskers And smoke cigars And be an imposing man With a deep voice And youll be a drinker

And youll suffer at first From all the horrors You will have seen By the time you leave Nam Youll have sene a lot Of incredible cruelty And moral ambiguity, And you wont want to talk about it You will try to forget it But wont But thats the way it is People will listen to you To what you have to say It will sound true And you will be insightful Good at political analysis and Creative writing So hone those skills Just like you have for fighting There will be slippery men Men of the lie Who try to kill you But you will always Outsmart them Youll be sly And kill them instead They will deserve to die Slow deaths, but Kill them quickly Your actions Will save others From certain death By these evil men What should I look for? Nothing Except follow your gut Ill send you the signs Use anonymized guns You will know When the time comes Youll practice to be Calm, steady and slow to anger.

Shun wants Stick to needs Live simply because Things slow you down And will only bring More grief Dont get cling to anyone, anything Or any idea Keep an emergency pouch handy And be ready to travel light Do the right thing Follow your heart and your conscience Dont try to be perfect Its impossible anyway But strive to be better Seek out the best men And keep them around you Seek their counsel (Remember, the man on the ground is right ) Meditate on me Pray and make burnt offerings to me (Cedar and tobacco are OK) And live in the here and now See things as they are Seek the middle path Watch for mental mines and Psychic traps Be determined Dont judge other persons Study Rudyard Kiplings poem If Its worth a year of sermons Oh, youll die When youre sixty-eight So work hard When your number is up Its up You have 17, 258 days yet to live Make good use of them And give all you can give And live all you can live Life is funny so keep it fun In the final moments think of me And youll be fine Youll be buried at Arlington To the sound of bugles and drums

And salutes from 21 guns Know where Arlington is? No You will soon enough As for the people you kill I will take care of them So dont waste too much time On guilt or grief That wont be easy Because you have evolved To feel those emotions Find comfort and relief In forgiveness and Spending time on devotions The people you have killed Will be as drops of sizzling water That have evaporated And turned to vapor Only to return to earth In the next monsoon Or a snowfall back home In the meantime, Be a man of action Have empathy for everyone Have compassion Be calm and persevere Now that you have This knowledge Dont envy anyone In this war, its your edge In your life, its your hedge Be on the lookout For callousness For pride and arrogance For selfishness Conceit and anger Harshness and ignorance Stay clear of people

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With those traits, They are smooth-talkers Of low and different character Crooks and psychopaths They bring danger Keep your distance Choose other paths Stay clear and free Of these idiots And watch them carefully Be charitable. Be a custodian And a steward Speak the truth, Give good advice, and Never use words to hurt Do you do this often? No I only occasionally Give this kind of advice So heed it. Strive for excellence In your actions, but Be not concerned with results Know what you can control And what you cant You will learn that Much is dependent On dumb luck And random chance Thats how I picked you And a young VC woman On the other side too Why do we have wars? Why dont you stop them? I wont explain that right now Maybe next time Just know that wars are like tornadoes Or hurricanes or forest fires Or tsunamis, or blizzards They just are

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There will be wars So long as there is a mankind So long as money is to be made So long as there is ignorance And so long as there is greed And arrogance Try to endure this war As much as you can And in the midst of this Garden of Evil Try to be kind You will wake up In a few seconds, And I will be gone. The VC are coming Down the trail They know youre here Others have already crossed A ford upstream And unless you leave now They will outflank you. Its a whole company And the scouts are Just about to appear, So get ready to retreat and Make a run for it Warn the others. You wont be able To hold them I am giving you my hunting knife as a keepsake Put in on your belt You will still have it when you awake Old Tom got back into the canoe Oh, and by the way You wont believe this dream Until much later in life As what I have told you Comes to pass. Like when you meet your wife You will always doubt It ever happened Like a Doubting Thomas

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Be skeptical Trust but verify Be ethical Know yourself Know your enemies Know your limits Know when to call it quits Be equable Be equitable and To your values be true, hey! Tom then pushed off, turned to look back, waved And paddled downstream Around a bend and out of view Right then, out of the corner of his eye The grunt saw dark menacing shapes Through the foliage and leafy drapes Of the opposite bank A young VC woman A Venus dressed in black Probably never properly kissed Humping a bulky back pack Loaded with ammunition Appeared out of the mists As if a vision, an apparition and stared in his direction Signaled the others to keep back She fired a flare To signal the attack He aimed and fired three shots Heard their crack, smack, and whack Got up and felt for the knife (Yes, it was still there!) Then, without looking back (He was wise not to dare) He ran, oh, he ran for his life There was no time to spare

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