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Patriotic Poems
War and Tragedy

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Contributor: Gary Jacobson || Poem Categories

Combat country as flag
No matter how much training you've received
How much bravado adept with weapons of war believed
When you've never wall-to-wall fear perceived...
Combat is something you could never imagine
Not in your worst nightmare envision...

Nothing can prepare you for that!

War's a real attitude adjustment
Just knowing you can die at any moment
Knowing men out there plan precisely your death
Fear insatiable with every fetid breath...
Preoccupied with it
Dedicated to it...

Nothing can prepare you for that!

Before your eyes smatterings of life quickly deteriorate
Into a mushy mass life will your smoking gun obliterate.
It wears on you...
Indelibly changes you...
Forever awestruck in ways no surgeon can fix.
Lifelong horrors... guilt buried deep in your soul transfix.

Nothing can prepare you for that...

When the country which sent its young princes off to war
Was not there to welcome home our soldiers anymore
Distressed soldiers bruised by it...
Bloodied and torn in body and spirit
Found Hope dashed from princely inheritance dispirited
Hope banned by prevailing establishment disinherited...

Nothing can prepare you for that!
By Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2003
Listed June 24, 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