By Wayne Fowler Finger In A Busted Heart A Vietnamese boy on a bicycle going very, very fast Leaving the village, his destiny being rapidly cast I have to give the order, for a Cong he must be The Marine intercepts and hollers “Dong Lea” The paddy dike is very wide but the boy runs back to the Ville The angered Marine knocked to the ground fires a round to kill The bullet strikes the boy in the middle of his back And exits through his heart with a lifelong echoing crack By this time I get there to the boy’s side, not even knowing what to do So to do something I stick my finger in his heart, as his face turns blue When I had gotten to him, a gusher of blood from his heart Was spraying every guilty party with blood that had taken part This killing like so many more was never, ever needed But like everyone else we were deaf to what they heeded He was just a fifteen-year-old boy, with panic and guilt That for centuries, solid families such as his, had built The man who shot the boy takes his own life years later and no one knows Of just how PTSD does funny things to humans or how the story really goes And even today, a hundred years later….I still question my call I live every hour with the guilt, the shame, the nightmares and all. POEM INDEX