A Poem by Devlin De La Chapa

Lovers push
then parish
two-folds
flashing flesh

eyes spring open
my gun metal slit
grazes your holy clit
I weep, hideously

salted saliva
imitate tears
baring bad fruit
o’ Muerta orange

somewhere
somehow, you
I still can’t
remember

–from a thread on our forum: http://projectagentorange.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=57.msg4179#msg4179

Editor’s note: Monsanto and Dow Chemical are responsible for dropping Agent Orange on both the Vietnamese and the Americans in Viet Nam.

A Poem by Devlin De La Chapa

She wrote them letters-
long letters,
short letters,
letters of anger,
letters of boycott,
letters of lawsuits,

but all those letters
written were just letters
wasted of precious time
from the man she considered
her husband and her hero

dead he now lays
in his highly decorated coffin;
two months, and two days
she still dreams
of abandoning her soul
to her husband,
to her God,
to her country,
at the Monsanto Dow entrance
in the form of a kamikaze letter

A Poem by Devlin De La Chapa

And his dirty little Monsanto secrets
spoke volumes on his discolored hands,

and he could count
the meaning of each,

he knew them greatly by name,
knew them greater by numbers

And these little secrets
shamelessly called out his name:

Honey, Dad, Grandpa

in the dark, the echoes of his loved ones
reminded him of absent ghosts

In his mind, no one knows
he is mottled by yesterday’s hate

In their hearts, he is blinded
by today\’s forgiving love

In his dreams, he is bounded
by the last of their hopes;

hopes still clinging to those 10 fingers

holding still the silent deaths of all those
that once lied silently before him

(Editor’s note: To view our conversation about this poem–and the revision process–and other poetry by Devlin De La Chapa, please go to the following link: http://projectagentorange.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=57.0 )

A Poem by Devlin De La Chapa

. .he still talks about the hill,
going up the hill
coming down the hill
not Hamburger hill
just a hill, in the middle of a place
displaced by war’s chemicals
combative to communism
combative within himself
exasperated with his past
guarded of everyone, everything
his soul, a piper cub
flying high on a Monsanto and Dow dream
dispensing all that was once beautiful and sacred
clutching on dog tags from within an eternal nightmare
of an unborn son

(for Dennis Dermody, forty-five years later)

Editors note: For further discussion on the impact of the Viet Nam
(American) War with Devlin De La Chapa and the editor of this blog,
please go to the following link:

http://projectagentorange.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=57.msg87#msg87