They carried the land itself, Vietnam. (15)
The soil, the whole atmosphere, the humidity, the monsoons (15)
The quarter moon rising over the nighttime paddies (37)
Those giant trees (70)
And a soft dripping sound somewhere beyond the trees (70)
Odd movements, odd shapes, the whole rain forest seemed to stare in at them (116)
The country rose up in thick walls of wilderness; triple canopied jungle, mountains unfolding into higher mountains (91)
Right out of the grave, (12)
Moving like shadows through the moonlight, filing in silently from the dark rain forests. (92)
There was no sound, no real substance either (105)
Not entirely, not all (105)
Something must have snapped (63)
The paddies would seem to swirl and sway, (209)
The trees would take human form (209)
The field was boiling, it seemed to suck him under and everything was black and wet and swirling. (171)
It lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms (70)
They made those mountains burn (75)
There was the feel of permanent twilight (164)
The trees are alive, the grass, the soil, everything (81)
It was inside him, in his lungs (149)
I was part of the night. I was the land itself (209)
I was jungle fire, I was jungle drums, I was the beast on their lips (209)
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I wanted to show the negative effect the land itself had upon the soldiers, and that the landscape could drive men crazy, as that was a theme I picked up in The Things They Carried. My found poem is sort of a story, with the main character being the soldiers' mental state. In my poem the land preys upon the soldiers, and drives them crazy until at the very end they become wild, like the land.
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