FEVERS

FEVERS

You can feel it coming on
The heaviness of false exhaustion
Arriving with a warning
Foretold by respiratory distress
Fits of sneezing difficulty breathing
Feel your self slowly breaking down
The long dreaded onset of trouble

Sometimes it’s a cobra strike
A toxic knocking out consciousness
Finding that you went down
There is someone leaning over
Background voices calling dust off

The fevers come in hot
Carrying a gaining weakness
The body wracked in muscle pain
As the mind fuzzily diminishes
Now only aware of the fever.

Next comes the chills
Shaking and new bone deep pain
Your fever drenched clothing
Bringing ice water to the skin
Trembling to your frozen bones
The mind hard struck again
Falls deeper into the void
Sleep comes like an anesthesia
No dreams no consciousness
Just the cycle of freeze and burn

When out with the ARVN
Fight the fever ignore the cold
Pushing on with the job
Moving in a zombie stupor
Mind desperately holding to body
Forcing and accepting consequences

Struck hard and struck suddenly
The ARVN in their confused kindness
Get you a new bed of sandbags
And by this let you ride it through
Culturally embarrassed to interfere
Never a comment afterward
Just move on back to business
Nothing happened nothing said.

Fevers are worse during monsoon
The body is wetly hot yet cold
The fever is fighting in inundation
The chills are shattering the bones
Sleeping in water as water falls
Soaked down to a tattered soul
Mind fighting to stay in this world
Comprehension becomes elusive.

The body sluggish and reluctant
Enemy contact the only relief
Rush of adrenaline a salvation
Alive though dying in increments
Feverish life lived as it must be
Pushed beyond the edge of prudence
Always forcing both the mind and body
To continue beyond the edge of reason.