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Garland of Brothers |
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No greater fear has a young boy found
Than death's specter of war, Vietnam bound
Men From New York, California, Tuscaloosa
Cowboys from Montana to Texas Odessa
Thrust suddenly into voracious jaws of abject death
Barefaced fear in every breath
Riding into the ravenous maw of flagrant death
Inhumanity wolfish, covetous, overambitious
Combined in this world of avarice
Just boys living with unmitigated suffering
Pure hate seen daily in faces malevolently glaring
Gone far and away from "the world" mighty pretty
Back home in Oklahoma City
From Washington, Kansas, Kentucky
Boys from Idaho to Arizona, hoping they're lucky
Students, farmers, iron workers, carpenters
Fishermen, miners, ranchers, brick layers
Gone fighting in jungled pit with hatred's insatiable
To contend with odds formidable
Burdensome acts intensively abominable
Formed this garland of brotherhood
Combat's bond sealed by sweat and blood
Camaraderie with their lives to trust
To make it past war's hazardous lust
Only way to hang-in was with each other
Enduring to the end... undying together
All for one, one for all, just hoping to stay alive
Striving in every way, fated war to survive
Formed a pact by battle's passion
Inspired by mankind's grievous ambition
Goaded by evil's vile intoxication
Brothers together in armed fellowship, terror seeing
Unimaginable horror doing...
Things perilous, graven, life-threatening
Desperate men facing desperate odds
Sowing and reaping whirlwinds of warrior Gods
The best of men facing the worst of men
Full-circle intertwined
Bound with ties that bind
Life and death contracts by flesh and blood signed.
This garland of brothers supersedes all others
Men in kinship with freedom's founding fathers!
Forget them... never!
Remember this fraternal bond... forever! |
By
Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2000
Listed
July 24, 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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