Texts made available by the Sixties Project, are generally copyrighted by the Author or by Viet Nam Generation, Inc., all rights reserved. These texts may be used, printed, and archived in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law. These texts may not be archived, printed, or redistributed in any form for a fee, without the consent of the copyright holder. This notice must accompany any redistribution of the text. A few of the texts we publish are in the public domain. For information on a specific text, contact Kalí Tal. The Sixties Project, sponsored by Viet Nam Generation Inc. and the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, is dedicated to using electronic resources to provide routes of collaboration and make available primary and secondary sources for researchers, students, teachers, writers and librarians interested in the 1960s.

Wild Horses

Standing before the Wall
Michael's hook captures
the orange fire of dusk
raised high
in a smart salute
to a time in his life
to this day
he doesn't understand

The quietly grazing
water buffalo
he felled
with a single shot

Wild horses
running in a pack
singled out
and cut down
with the puncture
of his bayonet

A solitary figure
working a patch
of desecrated soil
spun completely around
by the rap beat of his m60
as a snowy white egret
flew straight ahead
into the morning light

Something On The Moon

I told the old man
with the 12 pack
of Busch I liked his cap
that read Retired Marine

Later
in the bar next door
he told me
about an early morning run
into the lowlands
outside Khe Sanh

Hunkered down in a rice paddy
mud up to his ass
leeches sucking him raw
when it hit

Forty guys getting the shit
hammered out of them
calling in the jets
strafing the fuck
out of that place

Afterwards the trees
looked like something on the moon
I guess that stuff killed more
than trees he said
picking up his 12 pack
heading for the door

Marc Swan writes: I live on Cape Cod. In that short, warm period they call summer here, my partner, Dianne Holcomb, and I host a series of poetry readings for local writers. My poems are appearing in Chiron Review, Epiphany, The Oglala Review, Owen Wister Review, sub-Terrain, West Wind Review and Wormwood Review, among others.