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• Nguyen Smith June 15, 2005 8:35 am

  

  The Shaman
  Feeling like a jungle cat
  with scruffed-up fur and low-bent tail,
  returning from the wood-line
  and the call of the loon, the crow,
  the tree-climbing monkey,
  and the fuck-you lizard
  screaming profanity,
  having seen a python eat a baby deer whole,
  No longer fooled by virtuous appearances,
  just resigned to be fit and sinuous,
  until my final cry,
  when love is released from deep inside,
  knowing my spirit will never die.

• G.I. Joe June 11, 2005 9:01 am

  

  Nui Ba Den
  The mountain is a lady,
  who has seen many wars,
  while linked to the struggles,
  above them she always rose.
  Sometimes she dons a cloud sombrero
  that spans wide to circle her head.
  At early dawn she wears a grey-blue sari,
  by mid-morn she’s green in all her naked glory,
  her natural brilliance brooding.
  And the night brings out her many moods,
  she’s still a woman with passions stirring.
  She waits on a lover long since killed in war,
  she waits in faithfulness,
  above the present war.
  Her power is mystical,
  and they call her the Black Virgin.
  Her beauty casts a dark shadow,
  her statement is enduring.
  Long after the battles below her
  and climbing along her sides,
  she will be there to maintain countenance
  over the flat countryside.
  Those who have beheld Nui Ba Den
  can get caught up in her spell,
  she elicits a response that,
  for a moment,
  makes one forget about hell.
  She rises above the turmoil that is man’s continued disease,
  and in a timeless, postured, posing,
  reflects transcendental ease.
  When I saw her last, I was an intruder,
  but she welcomed me with grace.
  She was such a beautiful lady;
  I’ll never forget her face.

• G.I. Joe May 30, 2005 8:22 am

  

  Charlie Alpha
  The deafening roar reverberates as it moves through the sky,
  thunderclaps crack at irregular intervals through the noise,
  the rotors of the six Hueys create a constant, agitating, pulsing rhythm.
  The GI’s ride in the open mid-sections of each chopper,
  and jostle with their packs and awkward weaponry,
  some GI’s dangle their legs over the sides in mid-air.
  At a thousand feet above the ground, the air is cool and refreshing as it rushes by,
  the land below resembles a giant golf course,
  it looks so flat, with wood lines defining dog-legs left and dog-legs right,
  occasional bomb craters spoil the illusion.
  The Earth circles below, and the choppers descend,
  sixty feet above the ground and they look like a string of giant grasshoppers,
  they fire machine guns, and move in a straight line,
  descending to 40,
  to 20 feet above the ground,
  still moving, still firing,
  getting ready to touchdown.
  The GI’s wait with their hearts in their throats,
  until the choppers’ skids hit the ground.
  The flexible swords of elephant grass bow and sway to the rotor wash turbulence,
  as the GI’s scramble as far away from the birds as quickly as possible,
  they look like escaping pack-mules under their burdens,
  before they disappear by laying low in the grass,
  watching the birds fly away back into the sky.
  Welcome to the boonies, baby.
  Welcome to forty-fuckin’ days.
  That is, if you last that long.

• G.I. Joe May 29, 2005 8:32 am

  

  Déjà vu
  How now brown cowboys,
  do you close the can of worms
  opened out of vengeance?
  Don’t wonder why people want to kill you;
  wonder what your mission is.
  Your rite of passage routes
  east of Eden;
  you’re hostages of orders
  that say,” Go to Hell,”
  and vulnerable to the disease that doesn’t end;
  fight the war fought so many times before,
  lie to me
  and tell me it was worth a spit.