Hard Drive From Hell

If my memory serves me right
We crashed outside of Kansas
Throwing wine bottles at the Sheriff’s car
Cornstalks growing out of our arms
Tools strewn along the roadway
We talked in poetic sentences
Using words we collected from dreams
Words like “domicile” and “stentorian”
Not wanting to use the word “and” ever again
But finding that we have to anyway
In our Carbitol induced vision
Where the highway patrolman
Gave me back my bag of pot
In my bloodied fringe leather hippie coat
With the peace freak flag on the shoulder
Where I was pronounced dead at the scene
On Veteran’s Day nineteen hundred seventy two
Fresh back from Rocket City
With memories of the Wolfhounds
Taking over Saigon after guarding Uncle Ho’s grave
Covered with napalm
Watching a Buddhist monk
Douse himself with gasoline
Being reborn as a gas station attendant in Chicago
With a four hundred dollar a day heroin habit
Going to Washington to throw my bronze star
Against the wailing wall of dead souls
Who never use the word “atrocity”
In the same sentence with forgiveness.