So many things to forgive
the stink of sweat and fear
then just fear as bodies
dry and shrink, too tight
to pee, shit, or cry.
The sound of a falling man,
his friends praying, cursing,
begging to carry his name
forward one more day.
The taste of locusts
tiny saviors of men
standing knee deep
in rice fields, on feet
swollen three times normal.
Dreams, longing for one
more bite of something
Mama cooked, taken
for granted by the kids
still sitting around her table.
Sixty years later, I see
the dead when I close my eyes
slit throats smiling and flies
the enemy, waiting
to drag me away from life.
Eighty years old and I
still can’t drive a Japanese car.

                For Cletis Overton
                Survivor of Bataan Death March
                April 1942 and the sinking of the
                “Hell Ship” Shinyo Maru, Sept 7, 1944

(The little black diamonds you can see beside these names indicate that the man didn't survive the Bataan march and imprisonment.)

It didn't seem profound
when I wrote the sentence
it wouldn't leave me alone
I was trying to go to sleep
tired, but not tired enough
old, but not old enough
lying in the dark
thinking back to when
mother waited in the car
sent me into the store for apples,
milk, Campbell's soup,
and sometimes for a treat
we could have bologna
the kind with garlic
red plastic strung around 
slices, ribbons to tie
and play string games
although why I thought
of that while I was trying
to go to sleep, I couldn't say
but it wouldn't leave me
so I pulled the notebook over
wrote it in the dark
and content with capture
the words released me
until the next afternoon
when shopping with my
best friend, who turned
from the MacIntosh, Fuji,
Pink Lady, Jonathon, Granny Smith,
Cameo, Gala display -
brought the words out
of the dark, out of the night
off the page where they lay waiting,
"When I was young, there were
only three kinds of apples
red, green, and yellow."