They’re coming in tonight,
you feel it in your bones.
Again, the dark foreboding
seeping into your psyche.
You awaken….listening…..
bathed in sweat, cold as death;
barely able to breathe, from the fear.
The fear so intense, it consumes you.
They’re coming in tonight……
And you can’t stop them.

Which one tonight…..
who, tonight,
will be death’s emissary?
Who shall again bring the horror?
Which one tonight,
will again make me bear witness
to those days of death and terror?
JD….Vampire…..BMan….
Payload??? Who comes tonight
to raise again from their moldy graves
to torment and horrify my soul.

Fight the slumber, resist the sleep,
but they will come tonight.
Your eyes close, you begin to drift….
There’s movement……..
just on the edge of your consciousness.
You sniff the scents of warfare;
gun oil, bug juice, week old sweat,
It always starts with the stench..
Yes, they’re coming in tonight.

God. Don’t let me sleep,
Please, don’t let me sleep.
Pacing, smoking, sucking down coffee.
Again you start the liturgy,
the inane ceremony to cleanse the demons.
Yet, you begin to drift away,
into another existence,
Into another world…….

Sounds……………..
Whatz that!!....choppers?
The smell of rice patty excrements
flood your nostrils…
Oh God, they’re coming….
they’re coming…
Your body is locked,
rigid, from the fear.
You feel the tremor
as the mattress quakes,
a sodden victim
of your nightly terrors.
You feel the hair at your neck
Rising as if static charged,
Rising out of some primeval intuition.
Eyes, locked open…wide open…..
THEY’RE HERE….OH GOD….THEY’RE HERE….

The procession invades your darkened bedroom.
Rmac leads..he leads his ghostly patrol,
gliding in, with a warrior’s fluidity,
thru the jungle, ripe with death.
Face gray, and rotted,
teeth crumbling away,
arms and upper chest
shredded, non-existent
from the rocket blast in 69..
…Kontum.

Jungle fatigues rotted away,
showing bones and sinew,
where once stood my best friend.
Petrified in fear, I realize
I am shedding tears.
This personage, ghoul, ghost,
this apparition from the dead,
was my best friend.

The B-man flows into my room,
smelling of rotten personage…..
The thirty years smell, unspeakable foulness.
It….he…stops at my bed,
staring at me with his good eye,
the other side of his skull gone…
blasted away in ’70 near Ashau…
dead before he heard the round that got him.

B-man…B-man….
The local whores cried when they heard
you had cashed in.
You couldn’t get enough of them…..
and they, you, my friend.
B-man, they best trail buddy
anyone could ask for.
Go back to your graves, old comrades,
Go back and let me have peace.

His hand extends to my cheek,
maggots falling off his fleshless arm.
His mummified digit touches the tear
that’s rolling down my cheek.
His faceless skull grinds into a smiling grimace,
as shards of bone and gristle roll away.
A deathly gurgles from his throat….
A death rattle from a voice that voiced
in a world long past,
a hundred bawdy songs,
over gallons of rot gut beer.
“T Rex…T Rex…remember us…
Tell them what we did….tell them what we did”….
More a transplanted thought, than the grisly slimy whisper.
“Don’t forget us T-Rex……never forget……”

Slowly the transparent phantoms vanish,
leaving me…..
“I’m not T-Rex”, I whisper in soliloquy,
“I’m not T-Rex….just his shell...”
An old worn out, tired, brittle shell,
where once was your trail mate.
You are lucky my friends,
you have peace…
I am imprisoned with the memories.

My wife stirs, the room brightens,
the world returns….
“Same dream again??”
….silence…..
“Are you OK????”
…I answer in silence…..
She sees the maggots on the floor.
Her nose reacts,
from the dissipating putrid smell.
Suddenly she knows…I can read her eyes…
She knows……
It’s always been more than a dream…..

04/19/2005

Posted on 04/19/2005
Copyright © 2026 Fredrich Mohre