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Agent Orange |
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Agent Orange,
Vietnam's sweet revenge.
Wet...
Sticky...
Toxic...
Absorbed into a soldier's
Fighting war politick.
Agent Orange clinging,
Gripping,
Killing,
Forest leaves;
A defoliant sucking the life
That death bereaves.
It kills a forest to kill the foe,
Remember always
You reap what you sow;
Agent Orange impregnates
not only forest leaves,
But to a soldier's long-life
Cleaves.
Agent Orange goes home with him
To plague children unborn,
Embracing his loved ones
With a heritage forsworn.
In pseudo reverence,
Agent Orange has become
His clingstone inheritance.
Agent Orange to a soldier bequeaths
Entwining innocent legacies
Derived from a forest's dying.
Can you hear his family crying
The whole world sighing?
Orange,
Forever sweet fruit implies,
But this deadly condiment
Its name belies.
Sprayed to keep enemies
From hiding in Nam's jungles therein,
We paid dearly
This war to win.
Wagering
And staking
Our children's bright future,
Evermore... like a vulture
Hovering in an unknown darkness
Hanging over us,
Looming over us,
Waiting for us. |
By
Gary Jacobson
Copyright 1999
Listed
June 9, 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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