What Happens in the Mekong Delta Doesn't Necessarily Stay There

We finish each other's
sentences to the point
of questionable genetics.
It's odd to have such
a familiar relationship
with a man double my age
whom I've only known
for five months.
Drive around in a van
with someone for long enough
and you start to think the
same things, like that
you'd rather have the headache
of the guy who wakes up to
that hot mess in the car
in the passing lane
any day of the week
and twice on Sundays
than play the hands
we've been dealt.
We joke about our fortune
in finding one another
somewhere along the trainwreck.
That latter part, the state of the union
makes me think I'm right
when I tell him we're both
being punished for past lives.

He was in the Seventies service, jokes
about commando operations
in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Classified, of course.
I toss out a flippant remark about
the likelihood that I was once in
his squad, the one that must've
burned a Gook village a la "Platoon".
My mind wanders as I lay in sour sheets.
I picture myself manning the 60
hanging from the side door of the Huey
hot brass shell casings and ammo belt links
raining down onto the rice paddy below.
The Stones' "Gimme Shelter" plays in
the background as a soundtrack requirement.
Little black-pajama'ed ants in pointy straw hats
scramble for their lives, praying to their rotund
cross-legged god that the napalm airstrike
doesn't come and torch their crops.
He, of course, only smiles wider
that glutton for pointless suffering.

My partner in crime taps my shoulder
enthusiastically and asks to swap spots.
I finish my run of 7.62, get up
from the gunner's seat, and pass him
my flak jacket to sit on in case an AK-47 round
pierces the fuselage and catches him
in the keister. Just as he rips back the bolt handle
and starts to give some yellowfolk lead poisoning
a bullet tears through the belly of the chopper
and severs my femoral artery. The blood sprays
the cabin in regular spurts through the spaces
between my fingers as I make a futile attempt
to stop the bleeding. That younger version
of my buddy lets the machinegun pivot forward
on its mount, its barrel smoking and smelling of sulphur
in order to reach over and light my last Marlboro
procured from the pack strapped to my helmet.
"See ya on the next tour, Shakespeah,"
he croons in that soupy Bronx inflection
which I've carried back upstate. We both know
it's a lie, but it's one that is expected.
The hum of the rotors lulls me into
unconsciousness as I bleed out onto
the diamond-plate floor of the helicopter
and pass into the dark.

Fast-forward forty years and I'm next to
that same wingman. He's older now, has some
more scars, but the eyes remain the same
as they always do in the Great Ones.
"Get a loada dis numba," he says
as he pilots his van to my left, our new
unsuspecting victims not so physically harmed.
The whir of the battered highway
rumbles underfoot to the tune
of ten-thousand regrets
none of them being
that I've met this denim-collared savior.
"Too rich for my blood," I honestly confess
before downing what's left of my coffee.
War, like plumbing, is a hell of a humbler
and they're both about the guy
next to you in the trench.