Bedlam and Healing

Greetings,

The NYT is featuring a blog called Home Fires. It concerns American veterans and their post-war life. I posted a small contribution concerning my adjustment after Vietnam referencing my novel, "A Century Is Nothing." 

Brian Turner,  an Iraq veteran and poet of a book entitled, "Here Bullet," wrote a piece for the Home Fires section and included a prose poem. You may find it worth your time. Since then over 163 posts were made as readers contributed their ideas and perspectives on war, returning veterans, politics and the current situation.

Jeffery M. Hopkins, a veteran and author contacted me and sent along his website to review his book, "Broken Under Interrogation." You can download a free e-book or order a hard copy through Amazon. I was grateful to hear from him.

Here is a short part of Brian's poem. It is about healing.

"Medicine birds break open in orange and red. Medicine birds have eucalyptus leaves for feathers and bandage the air when they fly. Medicine birds fly through the windows in the head, impervious to glass. They are impervious to WAR and hiss and steam and vapor and combat and the circling lost.

"Medicine birds fly through the windows to land in our beds when we’re dreaming our circling dream of Divisadero and Fresno with its lost and circling WAR. Medicine birds have eucalyptus wings and when they fly in our beds they transform themselves into leaves and rain and lovers.

"The lovers in our beds are eucalyptus birds flying medicine through the windows in our heads. The lovers in our medicine beds fly eucalyptus through the circling loss. The lovers in our beds bring medicine to our lips and call it eucalyptus, call it love, call it leaves and rain for our exhausted souls."

Metta.

Pictures of deceased Vietnamese in Ba Da temple, Ha Noi.

 A man prays.