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Patriotic Poems
War and Tragedy

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Contributor: Gary Jacobson || Poem Categories

Big Silver Bird country as flag
Big Silver bird
Carrying me back to the land of the big PX
To a home lost in mists of time grown absurd
Harboring ghosts my soul to vex...
Civility for but awhile, forgotten in distant memory
Now anguished brother's faces, forever haunt
Touching down from defending freedom's liberty
Hollow eyes grown pale and gaunt...

I'm still fraught with anxieties of unspeakable danger
Abandoned by those who sent me, to make men free
Fighting still the protester's anger
Carrying disillusionment's burden loaded on me
Frightened of death within me still screaming
Needing only now my fears to rest
Surviving unimaginable thunder and lightning
Fallen to a booby trap, I failed my final test...

Fresh from guns and bombs and agent orange adhesive
All its sores on spirits well
Fiery napalm cohesive
In your heart forever dwell
Wondering if the next day we'll still be alive
Each step waiting to be blown to hell...

Hear still the cries of brothers wailing
Still feel the bullet with fear
Smell pungent death assailing
Passing near...
Always on the lookout guarding
Aware of how our lives have changed
We're back
From the specter of war depraved
To live with our memories virulent attack.
By Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2002
Listed June 13, 2010

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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War and Tragedy Poems | Poem Categories