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Good and Virtuous Son |
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Good boys and true
Taught God's Righteous Right to pursue
By goodly parents taught evil to eschew
Taught spiritual values holy spirits imbue
Painstakingly taught
The magnificent gospel in their lives wrought
They that would be inheritors of the Kingdom keep
Violence ye shall not seek
Boys taught the Ten Commandments
Were Divine testaments
Sent from above
With purest love
Taught, "Thou shalt not kill"
For any reason thou shalt not this lust fulfill
Indeed, turn the other cheek
Heaven's rewards go to he with spirit mild and meek
Though the eternal plan of God
Petitions sons cling to the Iron Rod
Live in My peace and love,
Raining down from holy vineyards above
This prince of the land, this fortunate son
Was sent to Vietnam and handed a gun...
Should he follow precepts taught in youth elemental
Or forsake them for cruel war's carnal path of the Devil.
In the jungles, American boys faced withering hardship
Dueling egregious dictatorship
Clashing in battles grueling physical
The greater strife beaucoup mental
Boys torn between lifelong teaching
Faced a tug of war of values beseeching
Between right and wrong
Muddy as the old Mekong.
That ole Vietnam War taught boys to hate
Because boys irate
Face better apocalyptic fate
Find it easier without contrition to kill
Find it easier to obliterate an enemy hill
Incinerate it with fiery napalm
Whole villages embalm
Just to oil some Washington fat cat's palm
Far away old men gave boys tools to ravage
Vietnam's verdant land to savage
Shoot to kill their prime command
Whether NVA or Vietcong brigand...
Xin Loi, too much too bad
So sad
Dinky dau innocents get in the way
Maybe on the other side they'll have a better day.
Agent Orange with Uncle's blessing's bereaves
Boys defoliate Vietnam trees
Depriving very foliage of its leaves
Bringing forever poison to a sweet-and-sour land
Spew diabolical rainbow toxins on every hand
Pollute earth and streams infernally
With a plague to last an eternity
Boys bestow on guilty and innocent alike in-country.
The technology of war makes waste-land barren
Kills good and bad, young and old, from both sides,
our brethren.
Soldiers of Nam brought this evil seed back to family
To forever pollute their destiny...
Yet Vietnam still lives... and we too still live
Soldier boys facing torments from the past
Tempestuous memories that will forever last
Still we can't understand why
We were sent where we, and our principles,
could so easily die. |
By
Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2005
Listed
July 28, 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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