I’m sick of Vietnam, marginal notes

suggesting I buy the latest thriller spilling

it “like it was,” sit through the movie

everyone has seen but me.

You say my poems have no life.

I need to show; don’t tell.

Open up. Confess

the “truth” of napalm strikes—

backyard barbeques you want to taste.

I guess you mean

slide the reader down a garbage bag;

kick him, hands tied, from a chopper just for fun;

cut out his privates, jam them between his teeth.

How about I take you headfirst

down this tunnel tight as a cat hole?

Mail me the metaphor for an ice pick through the eye.

May I send you twenty ways to slit a throat?

We’ll start with the tin-can lids.

Pretend I haven’t had a bath since Thursday

and my platoon is straggling towards a friendly village

when Hang Ten drops crotch first

into a pit of punji sticks tipped with shit.

Describe the shape a mouth takes before it screams.

Now imagine you live in that village

and I learn you dug the pit.

Look at me!

I’ve got a razor blade.

I’ve got your wife.