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Patriotic Poems
War and Tragedy

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Contributor: Gary Jacobson || Poem Categories

The Hill country as flag
There is a hill so far away
Entwined mid tangle-wood greenery
Nourished by battle's blood
Knotty corkscrews fed by the brotherhood
Matted by life's dew, jungle forces careen
Ensnaring boys betwixt and between
Battling up
The hill rising abrupt
Gaining ground
What have we found in sweet awful sound

Above the din hear still their cries
Visions of death passing before young eyes
Falling back down in loss of innocence
Paying terribly in lasting penance
For a short life of hate infernal
Fiery passing the eternal
Salvoes rain accursed from above
Abominably doomed without peace and love
An ending
Back to the beginning...

What have we gained
As devastating artillery rained
What on the hill have we lost
On mound of blood tempest tossed
Surreal peace
Demise or increase...
As we crest the summit
To death's pit plummet
Left behind feast or famine
That a young boy's heart gladden...

O, the sage on ethereal summit knows
Eternity's friend or foes
Sees below dreadful clash
Men enlaced in battle's bestial rash
Felling enemies by birth sworn
Fighting battles of brotherhood shorn
Combatant pros
Who in a twinkling chose
To march with sinister might
Entrapped in dire life or death fight

Men going where only ghosts of men gather
Mount the final attack with combat's brother
Humping utopian heights
Going where the eternal soul egregiously bites
Bridging hadean woes along bunkered ridgeline rows
Awaiting divine judgments pristine prose
Mid battle ambiguities
Animosities
Lighting the beauty of days morning
Till darkness mourning...

This day His hand will choose who lives... who dies
In war's snarled tangle-wood of lies...
By Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2002
Listed October 25, 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