Sweet morning, Miss Saigon

Slip that jade fern from your moonface

The bruise will fade with the last of my cigarettes

And my rice and my rations and my nicotine love.

Pointed fronds grace pointed lip lines

Eye lines, shy lines, hurt lines

Oh how I ache to see those hurt lines

Flow so sweetly into powdered honeyed skin.

Candied skin, balmy skin

Choking on the torrid sky

Wreathed in sable silken tresses

And my olive drab fatigues

Sticky wet from war and heat and love

Saffron swatches, fleeting fingers

Such pitiless powder-burnt fingers

Torpid greenery in the sunlight,

Melting into petrol gaslight.

Flimsy arid silks wrapping bamboo shaft poles,

Wrapped between your gold buff toes

Up and down and up and through the golden satin terrain.

Do you remember, did I tell you,

Did I tell you that I won the war? Did I

Leave my signature, my penname in your pretty skin

Like the steel and guns and war machines

In your sandy Mekong Deltas and your red-sun nightmares

In the ebony eyes of every baby

And the rickety cot of every feminine curve in the South.

The Huey leaves at dawnlight, Miss Saigon,

Chop swish careen in boiling air

So keep my bruise, if only for the sentiment.

Regards,

With love dealt semiautomatic.