When cousin Primo came home

From the Viet Nam War,

I was in my junior year

At Roosevelt High School.

The same high school he attended

Two years earlier, kicked out

A week before graduation

For smoking a cigarette.

He enlisted that summer,

Otherwise going to jail 

Was a real probability. 

He was sent to Boot Camp 

And Germany that first year.

The Army quickly determined

He was jungle-scout material,

Lead man in a three-man squad

Sent to the Viet Nam war.

He was shot five times,

The other two were killed.

Four bullets in the torso,

Shot once in the head,    

He was given up for dead.

A surgeon at a MASH hospital

Found him on a stretcher,

Put a fiberglass plate 

In his head under his scalp

To cover the path of the bullet.

The day that I saw him

He was in my mother’s kitchen

Wearing a hat to cover the wound.

He lifted the hat

Revealing a wide pink scar 

The entire length of his skull

Growing his brown hair to conceal.

He never wore a hat before.

I reeled from the sight,

Wanted to cry for him,

That would have been un-manly.

He chortled a sardonic laugh.

One-hundred percent disabled,

He would never work again

Or lift anything heavy. 

I also envisioned my fate

There in my mother’s kitchen,

A dilemma similar to Primo’s.

A dumb kid from the neighborhood

Unready for the likelihood  

Of being drafted at age 18

And unable to vote until 21.