Guilt Trip-Page 2
| But, no plane ticket for Vietnam. Not for 35 years not since McNamara & Kissinger kept Thieu & Ky & every human rights violation to the right of Ferdinand Marcos in power. They knew their American billions would transform Bald Eagle into Vulture of Death. Outside my hotel door I will ride cyclo the ricksaw of poverty with former South Vietnam soldier. He is pro-American. I am pro-Vietnamese. Irony is the karma of this planet. And I dreamed my anti-war convictions would win me Red Hot Vee Cee Girlfriend. Outside my hotel door I will dish out for beggars as Green Berets Search & Destroy. I will over tip at restaurants while U.S. bulldozes rainforest looking for forbidden tunnels strewn with books by Jefferson & Marx. Outside my hotel door I will apologize 3 million times for each Vietnamese exterminated by my country while my country exterminates its conscience. Outside my hotel door I will ride cyclo. Veteran will feverishly wheel me down streets of Saigon with hole in his leg & I with hole in my heart. I will scream, "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh The N.L.F. is gonna win." The Vietnamese will laugh & wave & forget. I'll laugh, eat a meal & make a Yankee fool of myself as I fumble with chopsticks with my no-agility Western hands the kind of hands that buried brains of Communist Suspect in Mekong Delta. N.V.A. Veteran will invite me into antique store ask me to buy M-16 bullet turned into ploughshares of Zippo lighter. I will see water buffalo village turned into cigarette lighters of General Westmoreland's protective reaction strikes. I have been Missing In Action. for 35 years. Now I am missing from hotel room in streets I remember from the DMZ of my past. So, I leave my hotel room to remember My Future. I meet her--Vietnamese old peasant hat lady-- rattling with her teeth down streets of Her Past, "You Americans,you killed my husband." I tell her, "I love you" because she's the one who reminded me I remembered precisely everything she had to forget. Back to Page 1 of Guilt Trip the poem |
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