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Looks like paradise, right? Thirty minutes after pictures on this page were taken, I was WIA, at the beginning of a long odyssey home. |
End of the Beginning
by Gary Jacobson © 2002
Is this the beautiful morning given me to die?
Thirty minutes before...but yet, not quite...
Before among primrosed grasses I shattered lie
As my soul banana-wood greenery’s bedight
Palm fronds foliage shading my head
Sweet-and-sour winds singing sweetest lullabies
Wispy clouds line my feathered bed
As my soul hovers nearby in soft blown skies
Not alive, but neither dead.
Never have I known such calm tranquillity
As when standing at the door of all eternity...
My shroud floating above my essence
Rests above bestial, verdured firmament
Bringing sweet obsolescence
Wrung from blood and mud I do not lament
No longer a pawn of a war I do not know
I was never really a part of it
Now, quiet peace is all I know
Seeing in and out through my soul
Eyes closed in sweetest serenity
Eternal harmony...
Big Silver bird
by Gary Jacobson © 2002
Big Silver bird
Carrying me back to the land of the big PX
To a home lost in mists of time grown absurd
Harboring ghosts my soul to vex...
Civility for but awhile, forgotten in distant memory
Now anguished brother’s faces, forever haunt
Touching down from defending freedom’s liberty
Hollow eyes grown pale and gaunt...
I’m still fraught with anxieties of unspeakable danger
Abandoned by those who sent me, to make men free
Fighting still the protester’s anger
Carrying disillusionment’s burden loaded on me
Frightened of death within me still screaming
Needing only now my fears to rest
Surviving unimaginable thunder and lightning
Fallen to a booby trap, I failed my final test...
Fresh from guns and bombs and agent orange adhesive
All its sores on spirits well
Fiery napalm cohesive
In your heart forever dwell
Wondering if the next day we’ll still be alive
Each step waiting to be blown to hell...
Hear still the cries of brothers wailing
Still feel the bullet with fear
Smell pungent death assailing
Passing near...
Always on the lookout guarding
Aware of how our lives have changed
We’re back
From the specter of war depraved
To live with our memories virulent attack.
Do You Hear the Call to War
by Gary Jacobson © 2002
Do You Hear the Call to War?
A place we’ve been to, too many times before
In rhetoric ringing so loudly, you cannot ignore
Hating men voicing failed thinking
Thinking by war, to peace restore...
Ready now the harvest of our sons
Sent innocent into the mouth of guns
On distant alien shore
Brothers, fathers, heard from nevermore
Forever lost in bloody tides of war...
Tho I would defend right with my last breath
To start the fight reeks only of death
Senseless hatred blooming, perverse to the right
Withering hope by political ambitions blight
Binding tight, keen eyes of justice sight...
Senseless but to those obligated
Fodder for politicos guns committed
Flowers of youth selected
Sent into the fiery pit
Deemed for deathly duty fit...
Promises fly rife of age-old fame and glory
Again told to our youth the devil’s theory
By men who’ve not walked in battle’s story
Sabers rattling of war preemptive
In rhetoric to our good nation destructive...
Maybe they too will someday learn
Before death’s cross they earn
The sacrifice of freedom’s mourn
Who’ve not tasted fear of death in mud and blood
Have yet to see the sacrifice of brotherhood...
That there’s no glory in war
Only hatred’s there that men should abhor
Death and dying on a far away shore
Floundered in hot sands of time
In a perpetually dismal combat rhyme...
We cannot alone all nations police
Dispel our world’s evil avarice
We cannot...should not...honor forsake
All differences obedient to our dictates make...
Throw those we oppose into brimstone’s lake
Sir, Saddam is no Hitler...
Our nation needs now, no experiment in horror
Jumping too quickly into war’s melting pot
Justice by armed intervention sought
No-one should have to endure.
Unnecessary war.
Learn indeed what the warriors learned
On whose hearts once evil and hatred burned
Who first hand know of values to sow
Peace, compassion and harmony bestow
Hearken now to their dream of starry skys
Winnowed from our house of lies...
Destruction’s Eve
by Gary Jacobson © 2002
Come destruction’s Eve
Hard on the heels of fomented war, I believe
As again we jump into the maw pell-mell
Our birthright to the highest bidder sell
A preemptive strike
Justice lost un-Christlike
In promoted enmity
Can’t you see...
World opinion’s ranked against us
Most of our allies speak out against us
All Arabia’s arrayed against us
What a disjointed weave we knot
When Christian, Infidel, Zealot
All Moslems for Allah’s existence fight
Yet do we go foolishly to strike them all
Send them all peremptorily to hell?
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Vietnam Poems index,
Each poem with more graphics and Pictures!
Through pictures and poetry take a walk in "the park" with the 1st Air Cavalry on combat patrol. Experience the chilling reality that will give you the taste of "the Nam" on your tongue, leave the pungent smell of "the Nam" in your nostrils, and imbed textures of "the Nam" in your brain as though you were walking beside me in combat.