Who said I is inside?

Oh! I wish IT wasn’t!

Put IT up in a tree

Or on a clothing line

There in sultry Hampton.

Hang IT up to dry with all our tears

In sweltering Hanoi.

(The air was thick everywhere IT went. You could almost say suffocating…)

If IT can’t make it in light

We’ll remember IT otherwise

IT is a name and a belief.

IT is a conception of a thing.

IT was moving, breathing, and

Bearing form

It has since broken down

IT can be missed. 

IT can shape meaning.

IT can dance in echoes and strange instances.

When gunsmoke rose it made breathing room for

Growing breathless

The roar of bombs rang out in memory

—Mind, moment, a series of mirrors IT passed by—

And in the blackened earth

What’s there to gain

But the sick ease of sucking down poison?

—Permeate. Waxing. Turning blackness.

The empty spaces where your life remains.

Holes in the world here or there, in Virginia or Vũng Tàu—

Those mosquitoes hover in the moonlight,

Slowly descending to the source of

An inanimate scream dissolving in the air,

A void made where IT, faces and names

—Fond thoughts beyond all farewells— 

Kissed God