A VIEW FROM HELL

_________________the molecules of your body are the same molecules that burn inside the stars themselves, we are star stuff, we are the universe trying to understand itself...LOVE,LUCK,n LAUGHTER...jc

A VIEW FROM HELL

healthy enough for a tour in nam,

not an only son,

young and proud to serve my country when called,

looking forward to a better education

than my poor hard working family could afford,

with the promise of the G.I. bill...

i went,

finished my high school waiting for deployment...

we went in to do clean up after the first marine battalions hit the beaches...

i can not explain,

will not try,

there can be no reason for what i saw...

small boy,

a cute kid,

asking my buddy for candy,

but wired for death,

exploding,

killing himself and my friend

along with several others,

a rain of body parts and horror,

one of the flying legs was mine...

months in hospital...

years in rehab...

introduced...

to the beauty of the morphine dream,

finding it now and hugging it close,

but, the price...

this heroin,

its got no soul

took me to places

neither jesus or satan will go

and the drugs the doctors give out

make me feel like running through wet cement,

seeing the world through frosted glass

broken pieces from the past

i understand, now,

the angry young marine

tossing the old woman

down a well,

on that first day

i set foot in viet nam hell...

 

Reviews

[Perkele.7885]

I have to say something here and address it to the vividness to what this poem speaks. Man's inhumanity to man, man's attempt to escape from the pain and the horrors of the war that he is embroiled in daily through drugs, and soon his dependence upon them. To address as well to the minds of the men that have made it home that are now so different from the ones that American family's sent over there. Viet Nam was not just a conflict, it was a war of unspeakable horrors committed on the the peoples of Viet Nam themselves and on those fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and sons and daughters of America that we sent there to bring peace to that region of the world only to ultimitly fail . I believe that we failed because we were soft when we could have and should have been strong. Forget being Politically correct. Win the War! Save American lives and Go home. Americans at home failed its Americans over there in harms way by sitting on their hands!

[Perkele.7885]

I commend jeannemarie coulter for the writing of this poem. It is is an an eye opener for all the things remembered and all the things that it did not ultimately say.