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Patriotic Poems
War and Tragedy

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Contributor: Gary Jacobson || Poem Categories

Closed Doors country as flag
Soul so weary
Tossed, lost, and oh so dreary
Dead-eyed bleary
Coming back from the fighting
Almost dying
In Vietnam war tumultuous
Lost along the way my innocence
All in my life held virtuous
Misplaced sacred values in the tempest forlorn
Gone the faith I based my life on
Disoriented, the best of me cut �n' shorn
Spirit misused
Abused
By the sleight of "the man"
The cunning craftiness of his hatred plan
Fighting for survival in a beleaguered land
Sacrificed
Mislaid
What a high price for your freedom we paid
Still looking for redemption
Trying to make the hate to loving transition
Trying to mask the killer in Nam I'd become
In my year of the gun
Under the blistering, hot, Vietnamese sun...

I knocked at your door
I think I know you from before
Please let me in I implore
Just come from riding a hateful beast called war
Give my impoverished soul relief
Give me succor to restore my belief
Lift up my faith in my fellow man
Help me again to understand
Comfort my soul
Lift me out of this contentious hole
Show the way again to trust
Lead me
Guide me
Walk beside me
I will try your sensibilities not to disgust
For I am a child again you see
Needing refreshing food and drink
For to rebuild the tarnished soul
My humanities death on the brink
Misplaced my life's goal...
Are you there,
Are you there,
I cry in the silence
Save me I pray from this castigated violence...

But I saw and heard nothing from you...
But Closed doors!
By Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2001
Listed June 21, 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