| Vietnam split our boyhood;
a thunderbolt severing solid rock
into separate spheres
tumbling recklessly down mountain streams.
You were too eager to escape
taped recordings of your mother’s lust,
a father who beat your sisters until
one night you bounced his skull
across the floor of The Beach-House
while I corralled weeping girls in my VDub!
I moved in more earnest spheres;
crouched over posters
dripping red paint,
resisting the draft in crowded courts
while mothers scattered mice from handbags
and girlfriends wailed toxic tunes.
I even played Miss Napalm in shopping malls;
“A hundred and one tons of fun,,
That’s my little honey bun
Drop a load of Napalm Bombs tonight!!
We’re talking about the Vietnamese
Stretched out dead beneath the trees
Drop a load of Napalm Bombs tonight!”
Yet we both survived the war;
you too squeamish for combat,
deployed to an orphanage
where you fell in love with children
you would have to leave behind.
I married into radical gestures,
wrote theses about violent dispossession
and fathered children
sprinkling pacifist genes on corn flakes .
These days they protest invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan,
I work with assylum seekers,
play with grand children
and last week
you asked me why we were such different men.
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