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| Congratulations,Poppa and Cal |
VIETNAM!
Why?
after all these years
am I so addicted to you?
Why do I love your memory mountains and ridges, and robed monks bowing to the Buddha morning?
Buses loaded with morning people and market wares!
The sky that smiled upon all the deception and lost dreams.
The days of AK's and M-16's!
Why do I love the mighty Mekong;
...........the Black Virgin rising above the floor of you!
The smell of lost dreams and incense at midnight.?
Why do I love the memory of my brothers faces..sleeping.
Why did you seduce me with your curved body lying beside the South China Sea?
Why? Oh Vietnam,
can I not stop ........loving you?
The seed of the Lotus burns within.
Caliber/RC
©Lou J. Klaiber
February 18, 2003
All Rights Reserved
____________________________________________The Answer!
OH Soldier of Vietnam
It is not I to whom you are addicted
To love the beauty of my land and mountains and my people,
The markets the ancient transportation.
Once my sun smiled upon you while you were young and impressionable,
.. While at night your dreams were of home.
Your days of weapons and fighting are done
You must continue to live the life you have begun.
The incense of night are replaced now by a loved ones perfume.
. Oh if I could seduce you back to those days of yesteryear
The love you perceive of me is but a farce,
. You must now remember fond things of your lost friends
And yes the seeds of the Lotus does still burn,
..But not for you. Sleep well my friend.
© David R. Alexander
February 18, 2003
All Rights Reserved
To The Ones Left Behind
To all of you that we left behind
Maybe this will ease your mind.
All of us to a man
Know that you feel sad, just coming home from that land.
But dont dwell on us for you see
We all are here just across the sea.
We look down on you and sometimes shed a tear,
Because you live in a fantasy of yesteryear.
Sure we all know that you miss the friendship we had
Fear not my brother, your name soon here we will add.
Look not at what might have been
Lift up your eyes and live fondly remembering when.
Your brothers await your journeys end
When that day comes we will be here to greet a friend.
There is a place already made for you to rest
Because you our faithful friend have been the best.
©David R. Alexander
February 20, 2003
All Rights Reserved
 In The Shade Of Orange
In the Sixties,our troops were sent to a foreign land.
My brothers and I went off with a wave of our hand.
We were all vowing to be the defending band,
the protectors making a great freedom stand.
It became a long ,drawn hideous war game,
the one needing defending having my name.
Thinking the cards had been stacked,
for vigilence, not one of us lacked.
What we were fighting for, you must see,
were the very lives of my brothers and me.
Yes,we went to Nam, and took a mighty stand,
poured our brothers blood into a foreign land.
Searching through leafless jungles,
hearing in the distance the rumbles
Of those unseen overhead planes
that sprayed the chemical rains.
Through the hills and rice paddies
and the blazing napalmed trees
ah,interesting what hindsight sees,
and it sure does not please me!
Home ,decades later, that`s where we be,
still watching out for my brothers ,plus me,
just fighting to survive in this land of the free.
gonna live forever... if Agent Orange lets me.
©Faye Sizemore 2/19/03
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State of Mind
What is the proper state of mind?
What is it we hope to find?
Where do we go for relief?
Who stole our youth like a thief?
Does anyone know the answers so dear?
Does anyone else really care?
Did our youth just pass us by?
Doomed to think and sometimes cry?
Why is the sky painted blue?
Who brought us together me and you?
What happened to all the days and nights?
Were we destined to lose them without a fight?
Did you really think there was an answer?
Do you expect to go through life with the grace of a dancer?
Does your life require a soft sweet rose to smell?
Did you wake to a dream that made you yell?
Now I repeat the questions of wonder
Or will these questions tear us asunder?
Im waiting for a wise person to step to the plate
Fill us with the wisdom as to our fate.
I didnt expect to hear a word
For I fear no one knows the answers preferred.
I hear a lot of I know the way
But alas they are just as confused at the end of the day.
This rhyme may not make a lot of sense
Maybe I am just too dense.
If you have the understanding and time
Wont you answer and ease our mind.
©David Alexander
February 20, 2003 | All Rights Reserved
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| CONGRATULATIONS,WOODY |
That Other Place
Down through all the mourning years
Fortunately, I have come to find,
Untouched by echoes of recurring fears
This special corner in my mind
Where demons do not come to play
And plague my nights or fret my days
With memories of that bygone fray.
One day, I heard a quiet voice say:
In this place gloom may not exist;
This is for those who did not die.
Theres no need to sit and list
Comrades for whom we have to cry.
Savor the guitar lightly strummed,
Join in the games of pickup ball,
Or snatches of song softly hummed
While we laze on a sandbagged wall.
Glittering stars in a black velvet sky,
Blaze like gems in the tranquil night,
And breezes soft as a babys sigh
Bring no danger with the fading light.
Brief those moments may have been
But they did indeed exist.
There was time to spend with friends,
Untouched by wars inhuman fist.
So, take the time to search them out
From where you have them hidden away;
Theyre still there, without a doubt
Ready to bring some joy to your day.
Look deep within, Im sure youll find,
Green and bright and dappled with sun,
That peaceful corner in your mind
I know that God made more than one.
© 2/23/2002 Thurman P. Woodfork
 Sentry
What is that young bloke thinking, sitting over there and all alone?
With his finger on the trigger and ten thousand miles from home,
Is his mind refining messages that his eyes and ears perceive?
Or is it back in the real world with loved ones he had to leave?
Is the full moon that's forming shadows on the killing fields of war,
The same one that shone so brightly when, undying love, he swore?
Are the fireflies that flicker like torches in the shadowed jungle night
The same as those he sees back home, which engenders such delight?
When he hears the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of the frogs
Does he associate them with the rice paddies and the fetid jungle bogs?
Or do they return him, for a moment, to the bubbling brook back home?
What is that young bloke thinking sitting over there, and all alone?
©Anthony W. Pahl
24 February 2003
 Responsibility!
He wallows, as a wild beast, in the living room of civilization!
And with rhetoric worthy of Hitler and Stalin,
calls out and faces down the world - they who refuse to understand.
A glint of evil in the eye of the demigod who holds the rifle;
A rifle with a muzzle that, at the same time, he aims at the naïve world,
and at the people imprisoned in his personal dominion.
Which nations are fearful of him? All are!
But sighted nations see that he demands a ransom be paid in moral blindness.
Blackness oozes from his heart and from the lands of these ancient people
whom he holds hostage against the golden contracts of the morally bankrupt.
An Eagle and a Lion shall direct sanity in this insane world.
Peace and Freedom will reign again in this ancient land,
And Babylon shall once more arise in this cradle of civilization.
But those not willing to pay the cost for freedom and righteousness,
shall accrue the cost of destruction
and that destruction shall be theirs and their childrens.
©Anthony W. Pahl
01 March, 2003
 
THE SPIRIT SENTINEl
I slept with those at Shiloh
I listened to them pray
I walked on both sides of the line
Dividing blue and gray
I touched them in the trenches
Amidst the cannon roars
Would that it just could have been
The war to end all wars
I was there at Normandy
At every row of hedge
I had my arms around them there
At the oceans edge
On the reservoir of Chosin
I sought to soothe their souls
I wept for them as they withdrew
Their bodies claimed by cold
I gave comfort there at Khe Sanh
And at Hamburger Hill
And I freely give it yet today
To those who need it still
In the darkness of the desert
When they were put to test
If someone only called to me
I held them to my breast
Then or now war or peace
He sent me to this task
Out of sight but easy reach
To any who would ask
Just know that I am always there
Beyond the ring of light
A never-sleeping, silent sentry
To still the raging night
©Randy E. Richmond
June 4, 2001
 Empty Echoes
There are many echoes
winding down through time,
sounding in the wind,
metered in their rhyme
Warnings on the wind
that have been cast forth,
time and time again,
never taken for their worth
Sounds of death and dying
mingled with voices crying,
praying to fall upon an ear,
hoping someone may hear
History is so misunderstood.
War has never been glorious.
Repeat it again, you could,
heeding, if you only would.
Heard on the battlefield,
it will be too late to yeild,
for those who won or lost,
too late to count the cost
Becoming ourselves an echo
warning of old battles` woe.
Crying because no one hears
just an echo upon deaf ears
©Faye Sizemore 3/3/03
How Loud Is The Silence
The fear of the unknown
The heights to which one has flown
Or the depths to which one may have sunk
Even when one is sober or if one maybe drunk.
Lying in the shadows on the ground
Knowing not to make a sound
Fear grips you as the sunsets
You are only aware of the fear and the sweats.
Of all the things that happen
Of all the sounds that make ones hearing sharpen
The thing that one can not overcome
Silence screaming until one is numb.
Silence is not a friend
Nor can one believe nor even pretend.
Silence is the loudest sound
A scream that will abound.
Silence, death, and cold
Three thing soldiers have feared for time untold.
Silence stays with you like the grim reapers breath
Knowing silence will stay with you even after death.
©David R. Alexander
March 3, 2003
All Rights Reserved
 
Which is Worse?
On Saturday February 1, 2003
Two things happened that should mean something to you and me.
The Space Ship Columbia was lost with seven brave souls aboard
Seven souls called home by the Lord.
On Saturday February, 1 2003
The second thing happened that should mean just as much to you and me.
A helicopter crashed in Afghanistan and eight brave members of our military died.
No more than a passing mention in the news while their families also cried.
Not to take anything away from the crew of the Columbia
But should we not pay tribute to those in the military fighting for an idea.
The news around the world was nothing but about those seven
When in reality there was fifteen on their way to heaven.
Forgive me the luxury of a lingering debt
But we owe them ALL something and neither should we forget.
So if you remember either as the years go by
None of them wished to die.
To honor one group and not the other
Is to dishonor all my sisters and brothers.
So lift up your glass in a final farewell
To the brave men and women of both whose missions was hell.
©David R. Alexander
March 3, 2003
All Rights Reserved
Columbia, Final Flight
Returning to Earth , their mission almost done,
As the world watched in shocked disbelief,
Three contrails appeared where there had been one;
Happy celebration slowly melted into grief.
Scattered across the land on that fatal day,
The Shuttlecraft was lost, with all hands on board.
A stunned nation could only gaze upward and pray;
Columbia had established its orbit about the Lord.
ã3/3/2003 Thurman P. Woodfork Silence
In a skies of a Texas morning
.........A dawning of sorrows
coming without warning......
Minutes from their families arms
...........We began hearing the alarms
The shuttle is missing........
..........The world was listening
...........They were quiet........
............My God,so quiet........
ãFaye Sizemore March3,2003
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