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Ham and Motherfuckers
Viet Nam Poems
By Victor Valmore
Copyright 2008
Ham and Motherfuckers
Index
Page
3.Betrayal by Tenderness
4.Big Al
7.Dried Apricots
9. Fort Polk Louisiana
14.Gator
15.Ham & Motherfuckers
18. I Can Smell Em But I Can’t See Em
21.In the Rubber, 1
23. In the Rubber, 2
26. Judy Garland Died In Cambodia
28. Leavin’ On a Jet Plane
29. Let Me Hide
30. On the Perimeter
32. Playboy Bunker Bunnies
35. Replacement Company
37. The Blind in the Ruin
38. To Dave
40. Well Lah-di-dah
42. Wacko and Jacko
Betrayal By Tenderness
“Then for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed.”
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
He came to us at about the same time
As that other one from somewhere
In the southwest Phoenix or Albuquerque
Seventeen unshaven blond small waisted
Such delicate hands to place on
The trigger guard of an M-16
A face so pretty ‘Gator said
I think we gotta break in her pussy
The next chance we get
We’ll take her in the rear
I believed my excitement was well concealed
When we playfully jumped him
In a bunker on the edge of the Michelin
Gave him the sad news about
His impending deflowering
Of course we wouldn’t really do it
It was agreed to be just a little scare
Then things got out of hand
When he put up such a whimpering fuss
I thought it might happen
Gave me a hint what it could be like
To be a full-time man with the world
Erase the foggy geography lines
Black and white no in-between
Synchronize the outer
With the inner
Fuck the piss out of this boy
No sideways glances during your turn
No hint of anything beyond manly enjoyment
No betrayal by tenderness
Victor Valmore 08/24/03
Big Al
I never saw anyone shake
Quite the way he did
He was introduced
As Big Al though not so big
There being no Little
The other one long gone
Back to the world
No one could remember
If it was to happy family and friends
Or that sad soldier at the front door
Asking for Mr. or Mrs. and
May I come in please
It had to be a joke
Or some clever acting
The ever present madness
Begged to be heard and considered
See for yourself
You have to let me out of here
My nerves are shattered
I can’t even light a cigarette
Never mind do all the killing
Patrolling waiting in bushes
To spring the ambush cut a throat
You have to see this don’t you
The first thing I did see
When I joined the squad
Took a patrol into the dark trees
Didn’t believe they actually
Thought I could do this
After a hundred yards or so
Big Al said it’s far enough
Who would know anyway
We’ll stay here for the night
Go back tomorrow with
Nothing to report all in one piece
All in agreement
This went on for a while
Not enough to get rid of the shakes
Or to stay out of the shit
Couldn’t walk away from everything
We got involved anyway
So he waited for resupply choppers
To touch down dump their load
And take off again before
He sprang from the bushes nearby
Arms pumping like an oil rig on acid
Feet launching him over the skids
Into the arms of Mother Huey
Next day Big Al was returned to us
Along with food and water
Wearing a few new bruises
Stern warnings to all in the squad
Keep an eye on him
You’ll join him in the brig
But he’s fuckin’ crazy man
He’ll get us all killed can’t we let him go
Can’t spare a single man
We all need to do our duty
We’re not cutting any slack
If he runs again he’s coming back
Finally some time off in the rear
Perimeter defense for a few days
Big Al off to fetch his cassette player
The rest of us to the mess tent
For some real food at a table
He enters with strands of acetate
Looped in bunches of tight curls
Falling over his weapon
To the first sergeant’s men
Which black asshole broke
My baby I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out
Safety off ready to rock and roll
Now just a second
How do you know who did it
Think about this enough trouble
To get you put away forever
Nightly bedmates with the ones
You hate the most
Not white and not from Georgia
My hands twisted the barrel
Off to the left bullets punched into the dirt
Hundred and fifty guys hugged the ground
Blisters puffed up on my fingers
Nothing to do but beat Big Al to death
They pulled me away
Before I finished you off
That’s what you really wanted
We all knew it you big fool
Put you in a cave somewhere
With the wounds to prove
You did the time leave you alone
No more horror terror grim reaper shit
Heal your boonie Tourette’s
No way Jose you’re staying
With us a greater punishment
Back to the bunker and cool off
Victor Valmore 09/05/03
Dried Apricots
In those days of Kyrie Eleison altar boy lessons
After school paper routes and quick cigarettes
A trip up the mountain to the caves
Where O.B. Joyful once lived
The best thing to do on long weekend afternoons
Save the women and children circle the wagons
Pick off red savages in the distant trees
Vengeance for the deeds of the scalp hunters
We saw it in the Saturday afternoon movies
Sandwiched between Bugs Bunny
And the Masked Marvel serials
Terror on the prairie scalps on the belt
The wind drove chilly tears across burning faces
As we whooped through the autumn forests
The first Indians in a hundred years
To leave our traces on the crunchy brown carpet
Yes sometimes we wielded the bows arrows and tomahawks
Collected little trophy tufts of hair on a belt
A scant decade later several thousand miles from
Those childhood playgrounds I played again
Under a sun so hot meager breath melted
Like the tarmac that sunk under jungle boots
A paper pop-up war spread out before me
On that first day in country Long Binh
Trouser creased spit polished Thai mercenaries
Who would kill you just to check out a new weapon
Randy Aussies wandering around base camps
Looking for a safe place to stick their dicks
Hollow faced Iowa boys caked in red mud
Greasy evil dead food smells
Back from some awful place that you’re
Going to know yourself real soon
There in the dusty oven fanned by whirring chopper blades
A spectral khaki ally made his way
Fearless and fearsome brutal brute who are you
ROK on your shoulder patch death on your face
And what cleverness to travel self sufficient
To the boonies with a bag of rice bandoliers of bullets
Things you needed to kill things you needed to live
A string of dried apricots at hand on your belt
They made way for you not from respect or from awe
Of legendary sorties your kind perpetrated
Not from fear that smelled of grave robbers clothes
Rock ruddied face punished beyond a shadow of grace
Humanity melted from your steps like guests at Elsinore
Quaking at the sight of the mad bloodied prince
We stared at the fantastical apricots formerly attached to a mother’s son
Now a cocky part of your khaki cock up your ears and your fears
Tonsorial cuts of hair from the barber’s chair in children’s’ games
To candied ears cut from dead heads in a span of ten years
How could I sing of love dance til dawn turn myself on and never know
That scalps on the belt equal dead pioneers
Victor Valmore October 1998
Fort Polk Louisiana
“You may talk o’ gin an’ beer
When you’re quartered safe out ‘ere”
Rudyard Kipling, Gunga Din
First view from the deuce ‘n a half
Through the gate to hell
Kill the Cong an epigraph epitaph
To a perfect jungle setting
Camouflage mascaraed eyes leering
At the new recruits on board
Only nine weeks for advanced
Infantry training
Really the basics
How to rig a claymore mine
Fix bayonets puncture the dummy
Eat dead chickens in the woods
Mail call with Sarge flipping parcels in the air
One for the hippie who won’t
Give up guitar songs from home
And mess hall if you’re not too tired
For things that your mother never cooked
Gulped down in seconds
Newly minted shake and bakes
Sarge is an instant NCO
Last stop before Nam a visit
To Dante’s Louisiana portals
Hot wet slimy scary
This time you’re in charge
Souls from across the land
Can’t believe
The place they’ve landed
Some do well
Others fall from boyish grace
Crossing the Styx not in the plans
Weekend trips to Lake Charles
Lucky for some
Mardis Gras in New Orleans
Polaroids to prove
You laid a blond bimbo
On chenille bedspreads
Friday dusktimes
At the back of the barracks
Swap homeboy stories and photos
Where you from
How’d you end up in this godforsaken place
Drink a beer and tell it all
Professor from somewhere down south
Couldn’t avoid the call
Have another on the house
Tell us what you teach
Well listen here to this shit
It’s English drama comparative lit
Let me show you what I do
It was Din Din Din
The sad story told with
Bugles in the distance
Bullets in the gut
Bhisti and mussick and here a dooli lay
Some of us heard the story before
And cried with familiar pain
That came from some place back home
Whispers of senior English class
Warm spring afternoons with the spinster
Who knew how to turn us on
Others heard for the very first time
A wondrous tale
Told in a language of foreign gods
But ripe with the juice of their own
Military lives on the edge
Of an equally mystical sort
With the last golden rays of the sun
Glinting on our tears
The beauty of the moment
Erased a month of fears
What are you doing here man
We can help you get away
Momma wouldn’t like that
And neither would I
Fly to some place
Where criminals lie low
Never go back to the students I know
Back porch is waiting for me at home
Victor Valmore 09/28/03
Gator
Front teeth lost
In a bar brawl near
The Okeefenokee
Probably the same place
You got a taste
For the chaw
That dribbles through
Wispy blond whiskers
Six foot tall
Barefoot count
Eighteen years old
Going on eighty
Indian blood in
Your blue veins
Eyes like turquoise
Belt buckles
Carried the M-60
Extra ammo with the Jew boy
Had a knife
Sharp as a razor
For skinning you said
Nose of a bloodhound
Ears of a cat
Eyes in the back of your head
On the trail
Plunged a finger
In a mound of shit
Silent swamp signs
Spoke a language
Classrooms never heard
VC three minutes
Maybe less
Through the brush
To the edge of the hill
Only one in sight
In for the kill
You’re back in the swamp
With the snakes
And deer and
Brown armadillos
Other squad leaders
Tried to bribe you
With extra food
And special treatment
Tried to take you
Away from me
They wanted some of
That jungle cat juice
Nothing could replace
The good luck
You had with us
Together we were
The snake that slithers
The teeth in the mud
Snap the trap
Just like that Amen
Still there in baggy OD’s
When I left
Neck hairs tickled
As I packed up to go
You said it ain’t right
To leave me
No hug no bye
Certainly no kisses
Victor Valmore 09/09/03
HAM & MOTHERFUCKERS
Another hot sunrise brought a welcome visit
An airborne armada of huey louies
Well-hung musky masked manhood on the wing
Mirrored sunglasses rakishly tilted
On strong browned brows shading
Fearful looks over the 60’s at the doors
We don’t know why they prefer to fly
These machines return to purgatory
Halfway between our hell and the world
Cold beers and melting ice are thrown
Off the skids with the mail the ammo the food
Tinned freeze-dried cardboard wrapped
That sniper in the tree has everyone jittery
Puff the dragon prep the bushes coming in
And on the way out again a couple of gunships
Snake through the rows of rubber
Like their namesake cobras stalking rodents
They eat their fill the rest escape
Hands rip the heavy tape of well-sealed boxes
Searching for the hidden favorites
The best tobacco best c-rations best lrrps
Coyly hidden below the awful stuff already
Rejected by the First Sergeant’s men with rights
Of first refusal and rights of first survival
Pot luck as usual until the wrapping is gone
Fat laden menus unchanged from the days and nights
Of inkee dinkee parlay voo borscht belt johnny boys
And don’t sit under the banyan tree
With anyone else but your favorite sergeant
Take the hoard to some welcome shady spot
Through the torpid glare I can read the label on the can
Spaghetti and meatballs at least a recognizable
Mainstay of lower middle class salivary glands
Pop hunks of juice into a mouth so parched with
Red dirt and smoke fumes rotten flesh sticks to teeth
Jeez I hear disgruntled news four or five times
Fuckin’ ham and lima beans in the majority
Wonderful salt laden globs of sweet meat
Beans that mush slowly and don’t take your cheeks
Down with every labored swallow into the pits
That end up squeezing partly digested plops into
A shallow divot never enough time for a proper hole
Do I do the easy deal or wait until the cards
Are played out around the LZ bluff my way
My meal is enough to win the pot under any circumstances
No need to be greedy cigarettes pass from hand to hand
Cartons are separated from cans confusion reigns supreme
At the last minute I trade the spaghetti for all the
Ham and Motherfuckers six meals for one plus the Kools
Keep the black cherry kool-aid
It goes bad in my canteen mixing with the
Chlorine tablets and melting plastic
Tastes like the soil around Newark airport
Or at least what a later life will intuit
On the ground again shots fired the sniper buzzes
The company quick on line to flush him out
My squad on point for the unlucky third platoon
A strange object against a tree appears to be
Some kind of green cylinder probably booby-trapped
Let’s just go around it here’s the First Sarge
Just a split second too late to recognize the ruse
My man goes down with a hit to the arm
Another to the gut and the flash of black pajamas
Falls back into the low green bush chased by a line
Of sixty calibers from Gator’s big gun stop it now
Don’t burn the barrel to a useless wad of failed metal
On my feet with my man blood going squishy in my boots
We move back for a safer damage assessment
Doc says we gotta get him out asap how are you
No pain no wounds just lost in a blood rush
I think I have aluminum in my teeth
Ham and motherfucker juice sliding down my legs
Hole in my gas mask fatigues bullet-tattered
I look like one of those unwashed hippies
Artfully tailored pants with the right je ne sais quoi
I also don’t know what’s for dinner tonight
My stash is gone my man died on the chopper back
My machete has been hacking trees for an hour
I have to stop before exhaustion keeps me
From reflecting on my first casualty
You in the bush I hope you’re as dead as that
Oversized corpse bloating alone on a muddy hillock
The one we found when we cleared out a killing zone
For another night defensive position
Please don’t let a mortar fall on me tonight
It does seem that a pair of heavenly arms
Has decided to encircle me at least briefly
Can’t dwell on it everyone knows
You invite an early ride back with that kind of thinking
Ain’t nothing gonna save you but luck
Victor Valmore 11/13/02
I Can Smell Em But I Can’t See Em
That day we taped dangling loose ends
Quiet chastened schoolboys
Skulking in a kind of flat bamboo forest
Without the normal wet marshiness
Already it was creepy as hell
Scurrying rodents and the sound of snakes
Wiping their scales like a rough beard
On linen dinner napkins
My squad walking point with some FNG