Forty years later I wake early into the night and Agent Orange kicks in—
How was I to know the Monsanto/Dow Chemical barrels that held it we used to gather rain water for showers could affect me this much so much later.
The doctor asked me to list my symptoms and I do:

shallow breathing,
slow heartbeat;
feeling light-headed,
fainting;
confusion,
fear,
unusual thoughts or behavior;
seizure (convulsions);
problems with urination; or
nausea,
upper stomach pain,
itching,
loss of appetite,
dark urine,
clay-colored stools ,
jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes).
anxiety,
dizziness,
drowsiness;
mild nausea,
vomiting,
upset stomach,
constipation;
headache,
mood changes;
blurred vision;
ringing in your ears;
dry mouth.

Take Vicodin, the doctor tells me
Take it up to four times a day for pain and I do,
and I wake early into the evening and the Vicodin kicks in.
She asks me to list my symptoms and so I do:

shallow breathing,
slow heartbeat;
feeling light-headed,
fainting;
confusion,
fear,
unusual thoughts or behavior;
seizure (convulsions);
problems with urination; or
nausea,
upper stomach pain,
itching,
loss of appetite,
dark urine,
clay-colored stools ,
jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes).
anxiety,
dizziness,
drowsiness;
mild nausea,
vomiting,
upset stomach,
constipation;
headache,
mood changes;
blurred vision;
ringing in your ears;
dry mouth.

Earth blue like an orange
in the children’s eyes
the colors of your indelible seeds

Rick’s Request

Rick

You are men of no reason, embenched,
intent, and only prepared to discourse
on any other subject of your selection.

Your self-assurance
only seems to be at peace,
with crossed legs, bent arms,
ramrod backs, stern visage:
body language closed to facts.

Have you heard me? –

Have you even seen me? –

Do you care about what I’ve said? –

Are you only pretending to listen? –

Are you just mollifying me,
waiting for me to breathe
so you can tell me where
I have gone wrong again,
how I have misinterpreted
your actions and words,
why I am at fault rather
than you, a no-fault clause;
let alone sharing blame or
facing your responsibility?

I cannot engage you
in further discourse as
you are no longer open to me;
and I am no longer your puppet.

You are men of mismatched parts,
amalgams with no emotion.

It is no longer my job
to piece your souls
back together.

Judgments are based
on appearances always,
and now more than ever
people are ripping apart
others on clothing or body
shape alone. Imagine, Monsanto
and Dow Chemical, your
grandchild with deformed limbs,
your family starving to death.
The stretch would be too
great for your imagination.
You should be ashamed.
Is your defense the rich deserve
to profit off the backs of the poor?
You’re just as greedy as the politicians,
but at least they didn’t poison us
with anything but lies.
You’ve murdered families and starved
children of love, how can you look in the mirror
and live with yourself knowing your atrocities?
Origami with folded wings pushes against
the wind in a way, these children
shamed from the eyes of the world cannot—
they parish long before they began
not knowing this world would try to
mold them in their mantra of beauty and
reject them because you couldn’t let them conform.

Paint me the sky. I want to remember
the fable of the bees after Dow Chemical,
after Monsanto and Bayer, after herbicides
chased us into the monastery to survive.
You told it to me the weekend we lived
with the monks; told me we had to make
love quietly, but it was ferocious; as if it
were our last time on earth. When we over-
heard the woman next door praying rosary,
we stifled laughs, hands over mouths;
comfortable in our sin, in our race from death.
Then you pinned my arms to the bed, kissed me hard,
whispered the story, the beginning of the end.
Please. Paint it. I want to feel the blood buzz,
the flutter of your dress in summer.

Going through Tianxin’s
unlimited stream of strikes,
seventeen fangs Zhen Ji
and hundreds of searching crews.
Just left the floor,
the human body with a towering
Linshao of Qi, hit by something–
Monsanto poisons, Dow’s chemicals,
adopted by this factor burst,
the first tone burst open,
then the next tone. 3rd tone burst open,
Monsanto/Dow Chemical said:
the time difference–.00 wonderful.

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.

–For Michael H. Brownstein

“Monsanto”

I was not there – chances are, neither were you.
Chances are, those who were are here no longer.
“Ah, but also no shorter!” is the hastily
copy-pasted reply, a wry attempt
to monger good will to
the shrunken few.

“Prove the poison.
Mete the motive.
Devote to duty.”

Da Nang.

A human right is second-class,
a head full of fiction.
Money grows not on trees
but the gaseous breeze whither
thrice they lay their defense
against ruined beds
of men, women,
children, rice

Animals and Earth.

“Prove the poison.
Mete the motive.
Devote to duty.
Sustainable worth.”

Maharashtra

You hail from lands which
consequentially exist beyond
the fondest local dream,
a reality seam from the Jetsons
or some other promising stetson lie:
“Surely, Indians do not die
for proprietary seed.”
Well, they are no less angry
than their cousins in the west.

“Prove the poison.
Mete the motive.
Devote to duty.
Sustainable worth.
We did no wrong,

Technically.”

Misoury

Oh, brother John…
I wonder how you would react
to find such word murder commited
in your wife’s maiden name.
Perhaps you would be enraged, having first done no harm.
Maybe you would frown at your legacy…
or be proud that your descendants
can talk their way in and out of an ethical game?

“Technically, they signed the contract.
Technically, children must work there.
Technically, we underestimated the difference in culture,
because that changes the definition of misrepresented fact.”

You dealt death out of obligation, not defense.
You gave aid out of reputation, not benevolence.
You, who boast advancement, have still not learned:
When we Do Our Worst, we will always get burned.