The frogs are gone (i)
From David A. Willson the Rear Echelon Mother Fucker
"Don't strain your weak eyes looking"
a young man wrote at the Army administrative center at Long Binh, Republic of Viet Nam,
So was Mrs. Cuc, who had been eating the frogs. And so, at last, only last summer, was the poet, dead 20 years ahead of his time by multiple myeloma attributed by the Veterans Administration to Agent Orange.
He had written prophetically, discerning a large truth in the absence of small creatures. They, and Mrs. Cuc, and he, the poet David A. Willson,
and all of the United States Military Assistance Command at Long Binh, were bathing and cooking with, drinking and eating, the dioxin we used to starve those fighting for the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam and shoot them down through the naked trees.
Arthur Galston, who invented the stuff by mistake, was already lobbying against its use when David was drinking it. In 1971 Arthur convinced Richard Nixon to ban its use forever.
But the frogs were long gone. Now David is too.
Read his poem at the Viet Nam Literature Project.
