Depression has been kicking my ass recently, if it wasn’t obvious already by my normal political commentary having been replaced with long, introspective ramblings about love and sadness.
[Corey Booker is a Senator, and this is one of the few times I really wish I was still a resident of New Jersey. Oh, and apparently the shutdown is ending. Good week for Democrats.]
Here’s a poem that I didn’t write, but saved a long time ago and still like.
—
khe sanh rivers
by shotgunmessiah. Sep 16, 2003
sometimes when i remember how it was
I’m drinking cheap liquor from a tin cup I
had from the war and I can’t hold it
steady and it falls in the floor, spills out and
runs in the cracks in the wood and
it reminds me of that time in Khe Sanh when it
rained all day, pissing down in the muddy streamers
and collected in little pools and
wore tributaries in the mud and when it
stopped
there was a little girl skinny and naked with
just a rag wrapped around her waist and
she huddled in the waste and shit of the village
when I walked by she looked me with
these huge eyes driven deep in her face and
she held out her hand and said probably the only
word she knew “water” and again
“water” so I give some water in the tin cup I had
and she holds it and stares at her own big
brown eyes and then she crouches down
in the mud and carefully pours the water out
into the ground and flows in the rutted cracks
and makes little rivers
and when they ask me what it was like
I say “follow me” and take a cup and
fill it with water and
I go outside and pour it out in the ground
and they say “what does that mean” and I
point at the water trickling dirty through
the cracks and I say “that’s what it means”
“that’s what it’s about”
and they say I’m crazy and they
go away and leave me dripping water
on the cobblestones and laughing and
there was a little girl in Khe Sanh
who knew the truth even though
she was blown to hell the next day