Tinnitus
by Ken Rodgers
For 50 years, tinnitus has inhabited me like an alter ego. Some days it swells the inside of my head. Cicada song, millions hymning. The roar of F-4 phantoms overhead. Sometimes subtle, like a whispered password; the creak of web gear in the thick mist. The hiss of a distant flare on a dark night.
When young, I squatted in a red mud trench for seventy days below the loud-mouthed barrels of 105 mm howitzers. Their snouts, when belching death at my enemies, wounded me; ten penny nails hammered into my head. I never knew when the guns would boom until they did, and then pain ricocheted, and still does.
Defense proved impossible. Not plugs. Not fingers jammed in the ears.
Just long, sharp nails. Loud, associated with the sallow faces of dead boys sprawled in the mud. The thrum of savagery running through the air, blood spurting from a severed limb, or spouting like little red wells erupting from the chest.
The tinnitus continues. Unrelenting. Like long-tongued guns. Like war.
A veteran of the Marine Corps who survived the seventy-seven day Siege of Khe Sanh, Ken Rodgers writes poetry and prose from Boise, Idaho. His work has been published in a number of fine journals. Along with his wife Betty, Ken has made two documentary films about combat-related issues titled, Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, and I Married the War.
“Tinnitus” reflects upon one of the numerous long term effects of combat.