Given his years of service to the poets of SC and beyond, Jasper asked board of directors member Al Black to curate a weekly addition to Jasper Online featuring some of his favorite local poetry. A Poet of the People himself, Al produces gatherings of writers and musicians both in Columbia and throughout the Southeast. He is the author of two collections of works, I Only Left For Tea, and Man With Two Shadows.
I have chosen W. Jefferson Bryson as our first Poet of the People, because of the unvarnished immediacy of his truths; no bells and whistles or other affectations; just his truths in his words.
I know Jeff as poet and sometimes musician who grew up in the upstate and spent most of his adult life in the midlands as a social worker and then twelve years as the State Ombudsman and still was able to retain his integrity and humanity.
PTSP: Post Traumatic Stress Poetry 1970
How it Was
Until it Wasn’t
Two years down
How quickly it happens
On a Wednesday
Walking a path
Crickets and comrades
Then little dark men
In black pajamas
With old AKs
As big as they are
Leap out ahead of us
And scream and fire
And their aim
So poor, so terrified
Of hulking, red-eyed
American Devils
Their shots tear apart
The jungle around us
We aim together
And render them
Red mist, mostly
Painting the foliage
And the ground
All around.
And suddenly
Wednesday, again
Tour over, discharge
A duffle-bag
Jeans and a work shirt
Commercial flight
DC-9 to San Diego
Teach Your Children
On the radio
And all I know
Is friendly
Or foe
And me, now
Without a weapon.
Flashback, With Soundtrack
Listening to Creedence
Reminds me of the jungle
The sound of M-16 fire
Of helicopters, of brown water
Of 50 cals, of F-4 Phantoms
The smell of rice paddies
Hot in the afternoon
Or drowning in rain
The smell of Napalm
The smells of Saigon
Viet Nam.
My Brothers
My God
Where are they
What has happened
To us all.
Zero-Dark-Thirty, One More Time
Three-thirty in the dark. Again.
And I’m awake. Again.
And I remember. Again.
All gave some. Some gave all.
And the elephant grass
Grows tall and thick
Through my memory
And I forget
Until I dream.
And the sound of M-16 fire
Suddenly returns in the deep night
And the thump of 50 cals
I feel them in my ribs
My own heartbeat
Even now, quickens
And I remember
The smell of Napalm
And screaming death
And I will sleep no more
Tonight.
Steppenwolf
You hear
Magic Carpet Ride
I see fire
Blossoming, rising
Red and black
Mushroom clouds
Of Napalm
In forever-green
Jungle.
Hueys
Cobra gunships
F-4 Phantoms.
Burning villages
Cluster bombs.
It won’t hurt you
It only kills plants.
Mekong catfish,
Twelve feet long.
China Beach.
Saigon.
Vietnam.
Some of us
Never went.
Some of us
Never left.
Something As Simple As a Song
Creedence
Steppenwolf
Blood, Sweat and Tears
Da Nang
Dok To
Long Binh
My Lai
Khe Sanh
Hue
Suddenly
How can it have come to this?
To be a sick, sad old man
Alone in a small apartment
In a raging city of angry strangers
All my comrades
Lost or gone
Ghosts of memory
Living or dead
And the greatest tragedy of all
Not a trace of senility
Or forgetfulness
Or rest
Or peace
In me.
W. Jefferson Bryson is a retired Social Worker. He has spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets and heard a lot of stories. Sometimes they come back in bits and snatches in poems like these.