Time flies! Just yesterday I was in the Mekong Delta, wondering if a bullet, rocket, or mortar would have my name on it. 18 years old, fresh out of high school, no counter- insurgency training, no prep, a naive middle class guy, sent almost overnight into the belly of the Dragon. The first night in Nam, like every sailor new in the country, I walked through the main drag in Saigon, a wild toad ride where bargirls were everywhere, grabbing your crotch, putting their blouse over your head (braless, of course), anything to get you into the club they worked in, buy them drinks (saigon tea), and take them to bed. $5 for short-time and $10 for overnight. Away from home, sowing my wild oats,falling for every con in the book, I felt like Hugh Hefner on speed.
A week later, the party ended. I was flown by chopper to my permanent duty station in the heart of the Mekong Delta, a flat bed of rice paddies that looked like a patchwork quilt made of mirrors laced liberally with canals. With the weather averaging 127 degrees F, I felt like Sponge Bob, my uniform drenched with sweat, the gunner I sat next to told me to look for VC (Viet Cong). He told me the average life span of a chopper gunner was 12 minutes if you were being shot at. He never took his hands off of the 50 caliber machine gun, edgy, hyper alert, responsible for the crew aboard the gunship.
I was in a dream inside of a dream, nothing I'd seen or experienced before, and nothing like what I saw on the television newscasts at home. I wasn't watching a glass god eating potato chips, senseless to the feelings those I watched were feeling. The Cheshire Cat met us in Mytho, the city nearest our base, Dong Tam. We were boarded into a truck that drove us through a winding, partially unpaved road, seeing tall palm trees, thatched roof hut villages, and people walk around in silk pajamas and handmade cone shaped bamboo hats, old men with long stringy white beards, bald headed Buddhist monks wearing saffron robes, an occasional motorbike, bicycle, and water buffalo carrying passengers, and rice paddies every where you looked . . . flooded fields of water populated by human arched bridges, picking or planting rice. Oops, I forget to mention I came into the country during the TET Offensive (TET is the Chinese new year), when all hell broke out in Vietnam and the war, which the American government insanely called a POLICE ACTION, escalated 100 fold. Saigon was attacked, VC and members of the North Vietnam regular army, unseen ghosts (your friends during the day, your enemies at night) living in the shadows, underground tunnel cities, and Buddhist temples.
Boom! A sniper out of nowhere shot at our truck. The truck screeched to a halt, how dumb, and we ordered by the NCO in charge to jump out with our M-16 caliber automatic rifles and look for a needle in a haystack. A few minutes later, having not found the needle, we boarded the truck and drove to our new duty station, a dry field, that was once underwater facing a bay connected to the Mytho River via series of canals ten to thirty feet wide, a world of hidden eyes watching our every move. During my first three weeks our base was mortared and/or rocketed seven times a night. So much for sleep. Every incoming mortar getting closer and closer, their loud explosive thuds, sounding like the footsteps of Godzilla. Welcome to what for me became the seeds that built the Wonderland Amusement Park, a mental, all to real place where nothing was what it seemed. And that was only the first three weeks!
Welcome to the mind of Robert D. Wilson, the Wonderland Amusement Park, where
reality is fused with truth, dreams, all too real flashbacks, personal mythology ala William
Blake; Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of The Mind with the addition of firefights, napalmed human torches, torture, sleeplessness, access to high grade opium, marijuana, and hashish, a long way from home, in a culture totally foreign to us, not knowing if we'd
live or die.
Ride the rides, feeeeeeeeeeeeeel them, a thousand white owls swooping through darkness,
and please, don't even think of bringing your children.
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
They gave up
waiting for my
weekly calls; the
two children I sired,
but couldn't have
a long line
waiting for cheap rice . . .
short nights
she wont' tell
me the reason she waddles
through the trash . . .
her conscience riding a
store front merry-o-ground
morning rain . . .
absorbing our dog's
faint yelps
how can i
understand the breath
of one who
plows the heavens with
uneasiness?
lost, the moon
stumbles through winter . . .
thinking
breaking
water, an empty stare . . .
the end to
a surreal walk
through wonderland
the stars . . .
each of them a voice
i can't hear
can she be
a whore for a couple
nights, folding
clouds into
a newborn baby?
burning trash . . .
winter, an egret
without wings
every night
i watch pirated
movies . . .
drinking margaritas
with stuffed animals
a puppet
under the foot bridge . . ..
mid-winter
a voice,
nothing more, the
wind
sculpting mountains
into forget-me-nots
a small boy . . .
waiting for snow in a
bamboo grove
lay beside
me tonight, blanketed
in skin . . .
watching action movies
in buddha's belly
mimic!
your dance, dawn, the same as
dusk, sans coffee
short lived, the
the memories
we exchanged
in puberty, living
inside robert crumb's brain
her eyes, a
television channel
singing winter
it is
difficult to
ascertain
the when and where
when time has no end
almost dawn . . .
a full moon that
doesn't stir
the smile on
your face reminds me
of a teen
planning the first
of many dates
peach trees . . .
the younger ones
are sweetest
she plays coy
at the the mall
with me . . .
knowing all the men
are staring at her
poor frog . . .
jumps into a fry pan
forged in spring
i thought
she dressed sexy
for me . . .
an unstable wind
pushing limits
feigning fear,
the smell of
incense
today could
pivot us into
a frontier
beyond the synaptic
grasp of too much
eyes, whispers . . .
a gaggle of bamboo
sans water
promise me
anything, kano . . .
i'll leave
the nightly dance
of rats on my roof
ox, a year's
named after you . . .
then what?
robert d. wilson
©2009
