My brother is still in Nam.
He's lived there for many years.
He may never return.

The jungles have swamped his morals.
His imagination is wasted on the sights he wishes weren't real.
His dreams can't go beyond the oppression of the jungles dank, rank injustice.
He remains a captive of the blood, guts and horror of hell.

He's still in Nam.

He can't escape the dregs of war, the nightmares of lying face down in the mud,
playing dead, playing savior, playing soldier.

In his dreams the bombs still fall, the bullets kill, and his mortality is still subject to
the sights and sounds of Nam.

He moves in that jungle, about to be bombed, and prepared to die in his own hellish nightmare.

He's still in Nam.

"I remember one night, perhaps I had gone too far.  Maybe God didn't want me to go no further, wanted me to live, tell about it, write about what he had to watch us do.   I know now he cried, it was never raindrops fallin'.  No, there ain't that much rain to ever fall."

THE TIME (i remember)
Chu Lia, Vietnam, 1965
by Albert French