Steve Deutsch

After Tet

Rick got the glasses
in Tokyo, on R&R
and the shrapnel in Khe Sanh.
He said they turned sunlight
to a kaleidoscope of color
and after the mortars
hit their tent at dawn                                               
the ground about looked
like crushed strawberries.

That year, the Beatles left for India.
We sang of lonely hearts
and of fields that were forever,
while people took bullets
for their beliefs
or for nothing much at all.
The cities burned.

Rick said that he’d bought
the glasses
for next to nothing,
at a head shop
in Shimokita—
the coolest part of Tokyo,
because he could
no longer stand
to look
into his own eyes.

Steve Deutsch, a semi-retired practitioner of the fluid mechanics of mechanical hearts and heart valves, lives with his wife Karen--a visual artist, in State College, PA.  Steve writes poetry, short fiction and the blog:stevieslaw@wordpress.com.  His most recent publications have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, New Verse News, Silver Birch Press, Misfit Magazine and One-sentence poems.