Poems/ Writing

[daniel]

Saw A Need For This! So here is a couple I hold onto:

"Dead Bodies

dead bodies on the side of the road;
freshly killed, bloody, grotesque VC bodies
to remind others that
VC are not welcome in this village
i'm glad they are dead;
dead VC can no longer kill;
just two dead gooks on the side of the road
as we pass by in our jeep
returning
i see the bodies
now propped up against a tree,
legs crossed,
cigarette dangling from one's mouth;
posed as casually as dolls
by little girls
in preparation for a tea party
i find it funny,
laugh out loud;
i want to take a picture
but defer to preserve
the "Donut Dollie" image
--------------------------------
i should have known then
that the little girl within me
who had once posed dolls for tea parties,
who had hated the killing and dying
before she went to war,
had also died
she was as surely dead
as the VC bodies on the side of the road
emily strange
©1998
Check Emily Out On Her Website: http://www.emilydd.com/

 

[daniel]

Ghosts of Vietnam Past
Sleep producing night terrors possibly induced by higher levels of potassium in the system
Is this reaction to agent orange exposure or my PTSD
Half gray, half color I see
Bombed out or demolished, white cinder block building
A road, paved/unpaved
Looking down, catching glimpses of of my boot tips
Walking with the sensation of weight upon my shoulders
Are these motionless cold bodies I carry?
As though looking through a videocam I move into the building.
Digging, unsure burying
Suddenly semi conscious/half awake
Sitting, feet draped over the side of the bed, drenched in sweat
I scream on top of my lungs for eternity
Awake, the scene before my eyes fragments and shatters in psychedelic rain
Slumped in the numbing aftermath of battle
Have I actually just killed someone in a sleepwalking trance
or
Am I trying to bury the ghosts of Vietnam past.
Never quite sure it is oh so real! -circa 1998 by me

 

[daniel]

REQUIEM - PTSD I

The letter is my pain-filled heart and soul Still quick, wrapped in yellow-ruled-paper.
I'm gutted, empty, bleeding.
Laid bare--exposed to the glare Cold, ugly, dead?
It don't mean nuthin'...you said.

INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS - PTSD II

You have not left my thoughts
Since I saw the sunlight in your hair
Yesterday afternoon in the courtyard
I don't want to feel!
I wish to forget
As you have forgotten me
I seek protection from intrusive thoughts

Cathleen Cordova
Vietnam 1968-1969
Army Special Services

 

[daniel]

More of mine:

What You Wan To Buy (written around '93)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You souveniere me one time. you gimme I go . You #2 #10 dinky dau You numba 10,000. I have you want. You want boom boom. Long time short time. You wan sicklo girl I hab. Wha you wan to buy. Chieu Hoi
You want stick bayonet up VC bitches c*nt. She talk plenty. You want to knock coneheads off gooks heads on cycles with your 16 as you drive by in a six by.

Rock apes, f*ck you lizards.

in patient out patient warrior nineteen year old specialized PTSD program. One on one Group therapy, Rambo groups for war stories cause you havn't got your compensation, Readjustment groups because you went through the PTSD Program. Maybe the gook bitch you stabbed to death really was a VC and not an innocent civilian. You must be drug and alchol free to enter the program. You have self medicated all this time. But hey take a pill says the VA. String you out on xanax to make you even more violent. Take theses six drugs you watch they will help. Oh yes and take these other four drugs to help counter all the side effects. You need to go back on the wack ward and wait til there is an opening in the PTSD program for the second time. Oh this time you need to stay in patient for nine months. f*ck all you all if I go back in I'm never coming out. I'll arm myself and hide in the woods.

Screaming loud and long while wide awake - what ever happened to those two bodies you left by the hootch the night you went on a skivy raid. Are they still laying there?

Where did the Helicopter take him after his legs were blown off in front of me.

Did the VC really take R&R at the same hotel with me in Bankok or maybe that was my first real flashback.
Thanks shrink at 1st Med Bn for telling me I wasn't in enough trouble to be let out. Sorry you FNG Gunny if I put my locked and loaded rifle to your head because you tried to make us stand an inspection. Where the f*ck you think we were embassy duty. Dart the wounded animal with 1200 cc of thorazine and medevac him to a malaria ward on the hospital ship. Whoops sorry wrong place. Ohhhh boogeyman they will send you to Bethesda Naval Hospital and you will never get out.

I never wanted to kill the Captain only cripple and maim him so that each time he looked in the mirror he would remember me. He was a chickenshit who got men killed. Afraid to engage the enemy. Should have pulled the pin when the frag was rolled into his hootch. Damn you Top why did you have to be sleeping on the other side of the wall. We didn't want to kill you.

f*ck you Captain for chaining me under guard for my last three months in Nam because you said I was an agitator. We really should have offed all the lifers on the hill. f*ck I let someone slip through the perimeter wire to do someone on an LP he had a beef with.

Thanks for hiding me under the rik of firewood mamasan - wasn't pretty to see over one hundred villagers wiped the f*ck out by Charlie Worst part was I was AWOL and had to watch as one Marine KIA and 9 WIA. What do you tell someone when you slip back onto the compound the next morning.

Never was fun pretending nothing really happened.

To the Bite Wad who checks Vets records, f*ck You, Check mine. I'm sick of that witch hunt mentality that is a spill over from the f*cking vet forum on CompUServe. Ohh the boogie man pretenders.

You were either in county or you wern't. f*ck Vietnam "ERA" vets. Never were there but hey, "I was in the service during the period and now I want recognition." Go join the VVA - wear all your little f*cking pins, jungle fatigues and bush hats and talk about marching in some stupid f*cking Parade.

f*ck THE "POW" ISSUE BUT INVESTIGATE THE "MIA" ISSUE. Aint no POW's but probably plenty of MIA. What I want to know is how many deserters stayed over there. You know the guys that ran off because they did not ever want to come back to this f*cked up country.

IF YOU LIKE TELLING OTHER VETS "WELCOME HOME" - f*ck YOU ITS WAY TO LATE!

I hate you mamasan for saying "Danny you no stay Vietnam, you go home now". f*ck the MP's who marched my up the steps of the freedom bird under guard to make sure I left Vietnam. I only stayed in the vil for a month and a half past my rotation date. Who the f*ck wanted to come back to the f*cking World filled with hippie dirt bags and politicians.

So what I slept on top of those silver coffins in a transport plane back to the world on emergency leave. I really should have blown away the REMF squid who told me I would have to go to OKI to get a uniform. Threats were sufficient I was on the next plane out and in the world in 18 1/2 hours. Wow things were going way to fast. Heavy Guilt because I wasn't there with my "p's".

I ran wild in Nam and came back to world hopped off the chopper and hit the ground running. Home all of three month and they threw me in prison. Never in trouble before. Sorry we don't have any programs to help these guys.
Don't know if I prefer living in a house now or the cave in the wilderness I once occupied.
There that gets some of it out of my system. FTW

 

[daniel]

United States Marine Corps
Rifleman's Creed
THIS IS MY RIFLE
There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life.
My rifle, without me is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than any enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will....
My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit...
My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God I swear this creed. My rifle and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but Peace.....

 

[Kaishi]

Old thread, I know.

But there be beauty, here, so thought I'd add one I love and come back to.

Siegfried Sassoon - Survivors (1917)

NO doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’—
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They’ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed 5
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,—
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they’ll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter’d all their pride...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

 

[vikingr24]

The priests were shot in the courtyard of the French house. Their blood mixed with the fallen leaves and dripped down the gutter, through a grating of thin bamboo. I knew the stain would be there forever.

The families came to claim the bodies as we ran through the ville. We leap frogged out quickly as we knew the wailing would draw attention, hoping we hadn't been seen. We stopped and listened. Now we had the jungle and the darkness as our friend.