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This Is A Place Of Remembrance
The Place Of Dark Angels
I remember them,
'cupping' cigarettes in their hands
at night,
as they cleaned weapons and prepared themselves
for another day.
Far away!
Lost within the Sunrise....!
.....and they were soldiers,
every one. (count cadence, and go on,old man.)
Young men that carried
all the world
in their eyes.
...and I was twenty five,
...feeling old
and hateful
of a war that kills,
and kills,
and never dies. (count cadence..and go on)
It was a war,
long ago,
that remains
in ragged dreams
that scream the cries of battle
into a long night
of silence,....... waiting for dawn. (count cadence)
I wonder where they are?
How they are.
I left them there
in that place of dark angels
so far from home.
It was a night without end.
It was a war
........called Vietnam. (and so we go on)
CAL
©91803
LJKlaiber
  A Veterans Prayer
Dear God
It's happening again
No, not in the jungles of Vietnam
But on the burning dunes and cities
Built on the oil rich Iraqi sands
Each day
There's more loss of life
Being sacrificed in that far off land
Young men and women bleeding on foreign soil again
For what Washington, DC calls an American stand
Dear God,
Your old veterans hearts
Are beginning to break
For innocents committed for righteousness sake
That will sadly take a war to win,
Dear Lord
I fear that our dark history
Is showing its ass again
How many of Liberty's Son's will it take?
To liberate a land that doesn't care
While they rant and rave telling us
That they don't want us there
To them human life is nothing more
Than a cheap, expendable, commodity of war
Dear God,
Who do we, as Vietnam veterans believe in?
We know that the news media bold face lies
We who fought in Vietnam remember
The double talk it took to keep that war alive
We understand what deceptions about
Coupled with misinformation and false body counts
Chemical agents that didn't exist
Knowing now how hopeless it was to resist
Being told when and how to fight
Not even to fire when our enemy was in our sights
Expecting any moment that a sapper could pull a pin
That's what we called terrorism then
And the death of one soldier was tragic and a sin
But now, as it was then, its becoming commonplace again
So God,
I'm asking you to please,
To wake up the comatose leaders of this great land
And to hold our warriors in the cleft of your mighty hand
To brand your wisdom on the hearts and minds
Of the powers that be
That they may truly see,
That our nation could not bear at all
Another fifty thousand names chiseled
Into yet another cold stone, Memorial Wall
Boon,
©9/20/03
Richard Preston
 She was there!
The eyes of an Angel in human form
The hands that held, that healed, consoled
She wiped your bruises, wounds and tears
She held you close when death was near
The gentle whisper of her soothing voice
Were the calm thru which you fought the storm
Although her heart was ofter torn
You never knew the pain she bore
Strength and kindness
Poise and beauty
Were all you saw in her call to duty
Just when you thought you could fight no more
She said I am here.. I won't leave you alone
Forever grateful we should all be
For her decision to answer
To say allow me!
Nurses of all wars
We owe you an immense gratitude
You too sacrificed
Are scarred and "fought" in hell
Thank YOU
The forgotten heroes!!
Be blessed and a blessing!
©9/20/03 Lola Rios
Vietnam Women`s Memorial Journey of an Orphan who went to War......long ago
The sky ran away at night
and we were left with light from flashes of death
that resembled the sad dreams that never die.
Night of the old night?
Where are your terrors sleeping tonight?
Mist and cold trembling
...like a tomb upon , and beside me,
somewhere in the back of my mind.
A gust of wind
screaming
with eyes open, ....screaming
...then gone!
Death,
and more death,
and a bird flying across the Moon.
CAL
©92003
LJKlaiber
He Remains
All these years
have passed,
since Vietnam,
and most all of 66.
I have grown away from war in the many years of age,
yet the lean young soldier still remains,
somewhere within,
..and he never goes away.
A friend said "We answer to the man in the mirror!"
so I went there, and saw 62 years of flesh,
and white hair,
and a white beard,
and all the signs of an old man.
Suddenly!
I saw him once again,
staring right at me!
The same as he was.
I found him!
He lives within my eyes!
CAL
©92003 LJKlaiber
 
Eye of the Storm
Ah... why, when the storm was merely a minor depression,
was my pen able to record my pain and fear?
Why, when the life of love and love of life was within my sphere of being.
was I able to use the indelible ink of my tears
to sate my uncertainties?
Why, when I felt freedom in the need to ride the cycle of time,
did the past sweep by me
like a kaleidoscope of vaguely perceived recollections?
Why, now that the post traumatic storm has arrived
and swept me up with and into its irresistible vortex,
can I no longer record the turmoil that is within and upon me?
I tell you my friend; the storm is not post traumatic;
the storm is now and the past is the present.
Tell me truly my fellow traveller in sad and tear saturated agony,
do you write of the present...
or can you merely, like me, write of the past?
I say unto you - until the past is relegated to the past
and our minds accept the pains of the present
as mere reflections of the past,
that enervating wind drying the reality of our tears
will too, dry the ink in the well of our unwritten words.
Write of the past as the past - write of the present as the present.
Combine the two only after both have been penned and secured
else the ancient graphite shall fade and the parchment shall crumble
and past and present will be lost, both,
in the unbearable light of the agony of tomorrow.
Write my friend - the words are there and will come.
Do not seek meaning to those words, nor seek solace in rhythm...
for it is the words that shall find their level in your heart and consciousness
and all shall issue forth from the font of memories.
I speak these words with love and knowledge
for I too have travelled the road upon which your pain dictates and directs...
The answer is in confident acceptance that there is an Eye to every Storm.
©Anthony W. Pahl
23 September 2003
 Oh!...Vietnam
The night
has a way
of awakening
the old stories.....,
yet no one is here
...or there.
So we tell them to ourselves.
The days
break
like precious clay
upon the floor of today,
......in memory
of yesterday.
We float the dreams
of ourselves
upon a stormy sea
called 'everyday',
..and a sky filled
with stars
that do not remenber themselves
as shining,
at night.
We carry bold scars
of a war.
Flesh of history.......torn
ragged and rough
...known only to women
who touch us
.. within the silence
of our nights.
Our lives have disappeared
into nightdreams,
and sudden screams,
of memory lost
within the new day
that sleeps alone,
somewhere.
Wide eyed
as a child
crying!
Everything remains,
as we cry aloud
and are born to ourelves
again.
Oh! Vietnam!
CAL
©92303 LJKlaiber
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