Jerry Kahn

The Last Flight of the Virgin Soldier

by Jerry Kahn

Circling forever through the dulled grey skies of Viet Nam’s Monsoon Season

Green Skinned Birds of Death Fed upon the Blood of Enemy Soldiers

Below Black Clad Figures Running along a rice paddy dike as if the devil himself were near

A flurry of words on the intercom: “Enemy with weapons at 10 o’clock” “got em” “fire”

Only eighteen but today I must kill

I feel my finger squeeze the trigger as I swing the gun around (as if watching myself)

As the merry go round of death begins

Brass wrapped hell rains down to kill the first of many

Two, three, four hundred rounds leap out and a body crumbles like a broken doll in a pool of blood

the survivor still running toward a hooch and still I fire

Rockets now join in exploding through walls, roofs and trees like lightening thundering through the skies

The firing stops

quiet

The smoke clears

Not a word is spoken

Movement below

Once more my body tenses, my finger curls around the trigger . . .

Rocket sight down and system armed

Outside the hooch a women sits cradling her child in her arm while the other hangs limp and bloody by her side

Looking up, staring, staring at me

The intercom shatters the silence “These things happen in war”

As we break orbit and flee the scene to be welcomed into the Brotherhood of Death

No longer the Virgin Soldier

Trivial Pursuit or The Children’s Hour

by Jerry Kahn

Oh there once was a war that was played with a score and John Q Public would watch it

Their favorite show to watch other folks go at Six O’clock in the evening

Oh we did try to please those brave camera men as we tried our best to amuse em

but they never staid round when the glad bags came down though we did hope the score it would please em

Oh the sponsors knew as the coaches did too that the scores they kept were uneven

and the fans got so bored with nonsensical scores that the threatened the network with leaving

So they canceled the show and let all of us go back to the towns and the cities

as everyone knows with unpopular shows the networks just had to please em

Those faces they knew that starred long ago they hope no more to be seeing

but directors it seems have started new team’s

Oh I hope there’s no reruns this season