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End of Our World |
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Veterans of war are lost between two worlds,
Where contention twixt love and hate unfurls
Hating enemies not yet met,
Cruel war's beget,
Wetted by hot longing, long turned to sweat.
The end of life's a wall-to-wall threat,
Where boys lose their innocence in war's defoliation,
Bear foul witness to hate's defloration.
Grunts borne to humping,
Grow to longing
To feel the breeze;
To get out of the open under shade of the trees.
Light and fire, these constants conspire,
Within combative hearts transpire
Our hearts within themselves for the answer beating,
Bringing rivers of life popping up with the sweating.
In desperation,
Exasperation wrapped in patriotism
Longing for a great adventure unknown outside of it,
Yet finding neither, only the ache of it.
In the heat, mud and blood,
The only good, newfound brotherhood,
Of men who've walked the Nam's edge,
Sentenced forever dreams of hell from tortured beings to
dredge.
From sweet rhythms only a child could keep
War taught us of death here in the darkening deep.
Filtered through times of perfumed fragrance,
Introduced to a life waxing exotically dangerous.
All innocence was by the killing consumed,
Walking near Nam's grave in obscurity exhumed.
There is no magic in the morning sun,
No relief found in the land of the gun.
Boys dreaming, hoping, wishing, longing,
Recite poems of farewell, well knowing,
We have left our world, nevermore to return.
Forevermore in our memories will burn
For what we see, do and learn
Make us for lost youth dare not yearn.
The dead innocence in us exists no more,
Adding to the body count's ever rising score. |
By
Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2001
Listed
July 8, 2010 |
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About
Author...
In 1966-67, Gary Jacobson served with B Co
2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam as a combat
infantryman and is the recipient of the Purple
Heart.
Gary, who resides in Idaho writes stories he
hopes are never forgotten, perhaps compelled by
a Vietnamese legend that says, "All poets are
full of silver threads that rise inside them as
the moon grows large." So Gary says he
writes because "It is that these silver
threads are words poking at me � I must let them
out. I must! I write for my brothers who cannot
bear to talk of what they've seen and to educate
those who haven't the foggiest idea about the
effect that the horrors of war have on
boys-next-door."
Visit Gary Jacobson's site for more information
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