Wichita Vortex Sutra

 

II

 

Face the Nation

Thru Hickman’s rolling earth hills

                     icy winter

                                     gray sky           bare trees lining the road

South to Wichita

you’re in the Pepsi Generation       Signum enroute

Aiken Republican on the radio                                   60,000

Northvietnamese troops now infiltrated but over 250,000

South Vietnamese         armed men

               our Enemy—

                           Not Hanoi our enemy

        Not China our enemy

The Viet Cong!

McNamara made a “bad guess”

“Bad Guess?” chorused the Reporters.

Yes, no more than a Bad Guess, in 1962

“8000 American Troops handle the

Situation”

                             Bad Guess

in 1954, 80% of the

Vietnamese people would’ve voted for Ho Chi Minh

            wrote Ike   years later          Mandate for Change

A bad guess in the Pentagon

And the Hawks were guessing all along

Bomb China’s 200,000,000

cried Stennis from Mississippi

I guess it was 3 weeks ago

Holmes Alexander in Albuquerque Journal

Provincial newsman

   said I guess we better begin to do that Now,

his typewriter clacking in his aged office

on a side street under Sandia Mountain?

Half the world away from China

 

Johnson got some bad advice          Republican Aiken sang

to the Newsmen over the radio

The General guessed they’d stop infiltrating the South

                              if they bombed the North—

                                          So I guess they bombed!

Pale Indochinese boys came thronging thru the jungle

                                            in increased numbers

         to the scene of TERROR!

 

While the triangle-roofed Farmer’s Grain Elevator

            sat quietly by the side of the road

                  along the railroad track

American Eagle beating its wings over Asia

                  million dollar helicopters

                        a billion dollars worth of Marines

who loved Aunt Betty

                     Drawn from the shores and farms shaking

                   from the high schools to the landing barge

                   blowing the air thru their cheeks with fear

            in Life on Television

Put it this way on the radio

Put it this way in television language

Use the words

                               language, language:

“A bad guess

Put it this way in headlines

Omaha World Herald— Rusk Says Toughness

                                         Essential For Peace

Put it this way

                     Lincoln Nebraska morning Star—

                                         Vietnam War Brings Prosperity

Put it this way

Declared McNamara speaking language

                       Asserted Maxwell Taylor

                       General, Consultant to White House

Viet Cong losses leveling up three five zero zero per month

             Front page testimony February ‘66

Here in Nebraska same as Kansas same known in Saigon

                       in Peking, in Moscow, same known

by the youths of Liverpool three five zero zero

the latest quotation in the human meat market—

                                  Father I cannot tell a lie!

 

A black horse bends its head to the stubble

           beside the silver stream winding thru the woods

by an antique red barn on the outskirts of Beatrice—

                                                Quietness, quietness

over this countryside

                     except for unmistakable signals on radio

                                 followed by the honkytonk tinkle

of a city piano

to calm the nerves        of taxpaying housewives of a Sunday morn.

                     Has anyone looked in the eyes of the dead?

U.S. Army recruiting service sign Careers With A Future

       Is anyone living to look for future forgiveness?

Water hoses frozen on the street, the

Crowd gathered to see a strange happening garage—

         Red flames on Sunday morning

                           in a quiet town!

Has anyone looked in the eyes of the wounded?

               Have we seen but paper faces, Life Magazine?

Are screaming faces made of dots,

electric dots on Television—

               fuzzy decibels registering

                           the mammal voiced howl

from the outskirts of Saigon to console model picture tubes

            in Beatrice, in Hutchinson, in El Dorado

   in historic Abilene

                        O inconsolable!

 

Stop, and eat more flesh.

‘‘We will negotiate anywhere anytime”

said the giant President

      Kansas City Times 2/14/66: “Word reached U.S. authorities that Thailand’s leaders feared that in Honolulu Johnson might have tried to persuade South Vietnam’s rulers to ease their stand against negotiating with the Viet Cong.

American officials said these fears were groundless and Humphrey was telling the Thais so.”

                                                            AP dispatch

                                                              The last week’s paper is Amnesia.