PRISONERS OF WAR

My father crawled the jungle floor
inflamed by agent orange.
He shot into the air and watched bullets soar away
and tangle in the vines above his head
because he didn’t want to shoot at strangers
who knew nothing about him but just that he was human.

.

And still, they chained his limbs for the massacre of none,
his intelligence a weapon of mass destruction
and for eight years, he held fist fights with death
and trampled snakes for food because they reminded him
of the fact that destruction breeds creation.

.

They threatened him for being unafraid,
for daring to tread the line of insubordination,
for singing the songs of revolution that strangers died for,
and with all due respect, he bared his chest
and dared them to batter his heart,
swollen with love and understanding,
because he knew the bullets
would simply hurl through the holes of
the grief and loss that war festered
when they nestled within his chest--
and they threw their limbs down
because they feared his courage,
too afraid to see their reflections in his blood.

.

As the reflection of his blood,
I carry the courage and rebellion
that swelled within his chest,
because the seed he planted within my mother
propelled the eight years of sorrow he learned
when he shot at strangers who looked like him
into my soul as I germinated the force of his history.
Sometimes, I feel as though I am mourning
the men my father knew and carried and buried
and I am aware of the fact that
he has not yet interred those feelings,
let alone the many names he must remember.
Somedays, I hold the recklessness he displayed
when he demanded food, in a place
where rice and maggots looked the same.

.

And, like him, I do not fear death,
even though death has bruised my ribs
and thrown the air from my lungs
and carved his name into my arms,
because my father can still remember
the belt around his neck.
But the war in my head
is something that he cannot see,
and because he is used to seeing villages
touched by fire, and the smell of burning trees,
this internal battle is something
he does not know how to help me conquer.
He can only blindly shoot at my enemy,
but it is foreign and he cannot see it
because when he looks at me,
the pain is too familiar to recognize.

.

How ironic it is
that the only way to cure the pain,
is to be locked away in a colorless cell
and to play a game of quiet compliance.

.

--the ward is as hospitable as a reeducation camp

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