Every day, even the nonreligious boys knelt and bowed, so as to pray,
“Oh dear God,” they’d say, “Let me be the predator and not the prey!”
April came, and for months we sang
A sweet song about running away
Not ‘cause we were afraid,
We just didn’t want to stay
We wanted to escape--
To take the A-train to the planes at Da Nang
And go home.
So we heeded the word
And we ran through the jungle.
Who could have ever guessed that a hamburger could be so unappetizing?
Here’s the truth: that ain’t ketchup, and this ain’t child’s play.
No Red-Riders or Daisies
These toys are real and so is this pain.
If you’re lucky, you can be saved
If you’re lucky, it might just rain
If you’re lucky, they’ll cancel the game
If you’re lucky, you’ve got today.
And what we imagined when we were tots
About the war our fathers fought
Was all fun ‘til we were caught
In the A Shau Valley with jungle rot
Starving half to death for a C-ration box,
Brothers dying left and right—even if we could, we wouldn’t watch
We had our sights lined up to fire shots
Leaving behind us all our guts
No time for stomachs tied up in knots
No tears, no fear, we’re here to give ‘em hell
And that’s our job
So that’s what we’ll do.
Search.
Destroy.
No sleep for days, a **** sure bet
That sick feeling you’ll need to use your bayonet
‘cause some poor ******** so unfortunate
To stumble upon you and take what he gets
Surprise, surprise: no peace this year for beloved Tet
“Happy New Year!” are they ready? Are they set?
For two years, their leader’s dead
And the VC’s still such a threat
Both sides take turns mowing down men they’ve never met
They want and we want each other to quit,
That’s what we all expect
But it still hasn’t happened yet.
It’s been five-plus years and we’re still here
Taking baby-faced rookies hardly old enough to drink a beer
Turning them into hardened men through blood, sweat, and tears
Black or white, straight or queer
We’re all equal on the battlefields
We don’t come cheap, but we come at a steal
Valuable and worthless at the same time
It all depends who you ask, the folks at home or the men on the lines
And everyone in between has a different answer too
Olive-Drab boys filling combat boots
A couple thousand bucks for already-dying shoes
To ****** the roots of a foreign land where none of us belong.
Why can’t we leave ‘em alone?
No time to ask questions, just follow your orders:
**** and survive,
Do your damnedest not to die,
Then you can get on the plane and fly.
Fly on home, under one condition:
Survive the brimstone and ******
weather the storm and see the calm.
Been here 3 years myself, and I heard stories--
Got letters from buddies who made it safe to Uncle Sam
“They hate us back here. Why?”
I ain’t quite sure, man!
Life sure gets different real fast when you’re face-to-face with an enemy
And in a split second, without a thought, you snap his arm and stab his throat
Then lie him down, walk away, and that very same day, go write your girl back home a love-note.
Sure, it’s gotta be nuts to them folks back home, staring into the deep and empty eyes of men who killed and died
Out in those jungles where their country’s pride learned to hide like a silhouette when you **** the light.
It’s gotta be nuts trying to adjust to waking up in a comfy bed without seein’ someone dyin’—
The paranoia of stepping outside to grab the morning paper, which could **** well be a landmine.
Oh, the things they must hear!
Deafening silence.
Deafening silence, through which, if you listen close enough, you’ll hear the shells burst and the bullets fire all day and all night.
And you’re just plain crazy.
Is the mailman a friendly?
Is the neighbor’s kid deadly?
It’s sure gotta be terror.
Pure terror.
I’d say I’m coming home, but I wouldn’t want anyone to feel the sorrow
Or the pain or the guilt or any disappointment when I die tomorrow.
The truth, though, is that I’ve been dead for three years and change now.
Nobody lives. Nobody makes it here,
We just
Drone along, and
Run through the hell we’ve come to know as Vietnam.
Any man who says he’s “fine”?
Well, that’s a **** filthy lie,
For we’ve all come to run through the jungle
Not to live,
But to die.
Sep 16, 2016
Sep 16, 2016 at 7:30 AM UTC
Every day, even the nonreligious boys knelt and bowed, so as to pray,
“Oh dear God,” they’d say, “Let me be the predator and not the prey!”
April came, and for months we sang
A sweet song about running away
Not ‘cause we were afraid,
We just didn’t want to stay
We wanted to escape--
To take the A-train to the planes at Da Nang
And go home.
So we heeded the word
And we ran through the jungle.
Who could have ever guessed that a hamburger could be so unappetizing?
Here’s the truth: that ain’t ketchup, and this ain’t child’s play.
No Red-Riders or Daisies
These toys are real and so is this pain.
If you’re lucky, you can be saved
If you’re lucky, it might just rain
If you’re lucky, they’ll cancel the game
If you’re lucky, you’ve got today.
And what we imagined when we were tots
About the war our fathers fought
Was all fun ‘til we were caught
In the A Shau Valley with jungle rot
Starving half to death for a C-ration box,
Brothers dying left and right—even if we could, we wouldn’t watch
We had our sights lined up to fire shots
Leaving behind us all our guts
No time for stomachs tied up in knots
No tears, no fear, we’re here to give ‘em hell
And that’s our job
So that’s what we’ll do.
Search.
Destroy.
No sleep for days, a **** sure bet
That sick feeling you’ll need to use your bayonet
‘cause some poor ******** so unfortunate
To stumble upon you and take what he gets
Surprise, surprise: no peace this year for beloved Tet
“Happy New Year!” are they ready? Are they set?
For two years, their leader’s dead
And the VC’s still such a threat
Both sides take turns mowing down men they’ve never met
They want and we want each other to quit,
That’s what we all expect
But it still hasn’t happened yet.
It’s been five-plus years and we’re still here
Taking baby-faced rookies hardly old enough to drink a beer
Turning them into hardened men through blood, sweat, and tears
Black or white, straight or queer
We’re all equal on the battlefields
We don’t come cheap, but we come at a steal
Valuable and worthless at the same time
It all depends who you ask, the folks at home or the men on the lines
And everyone in between has a different answer too
Olive-Drab boys filling combat boots
A couple thousand bucks for already-dying shoes
To ****** the roots of a foreign land where none of us belong.
Why can’t we leave ‘em alone?
No time to ask questions, just follow your orders:
**** and survive,
Do your damnedest not to die,
Then you can get on the plane and fly.
Fly on home, under one condition:
Survive the brimstone and ******
weather the storm and see the calm.
Been here 3 years myself, and I heard stories--
Got letters from buddies who made it safe to Uncle Sam
“They hate us back here. Why?”
I ain’t quite sure, man!
Life sure gets different real fast when you’re face-to-face with an enemy
And in a split second, without a thought, you snap his arm and stab his throat
Then lie him down, walk away, and that very same day, go write your girl back home a love-note.
Sure, it’s gotta be nuts to them folks back home, staring into the deep and empty eyes of men who killed and died
Out in those jungles where their country’s pride learned to hide like a silhouette when you **** the light.
It’s gotta be nuts trying to adjust to waking up in a comfy bed without seein’ someone dyin’—
The paranoia of stepping outside to grab the morning paper, which could **** well be a landmine.
Oh, the things they must hear!
Deafening silence.
Deafening silence, through which, if you listen close enough, you’ll hear the shells burst and the bullets fire all day and all night.
And you’re just plain crazy.
Is the mailman a friendly?
Is the neighbor’s kid deadly?
It’s sure gotta be terror.
Pure terror.
I’d say I’m coming home, but I wouldn’t want anyone to feel the sorrow
Or the pain or the guilt or any disappointment when I die tomorrow.
The truth, though, is that I’ve been dead for three years and change now.
Nobody lives. Nobody makes it here,
We just
Drone along, and
Run through the hell we’ve come to know as Vietnam.
Any man who says he’s “fine”?
Well, that’s a **** filthy lie,
For we’ve all come to run through the jungle
Not to live,
But to die.
Written intended to be almost like a letter back home from the perspective of a battle-worn veteran of the U.S. Military in Vietnam.
The narrator is, in my perspective, a 21-year-old soldier who no longer dreads death, nor does he really care or put much thought into whether or not he will live or die; he has lost plenty of friends, as well as any purpose to make new friends in Vietnam. He initially wrote this "letter" to send to someone--anyone--back home, but he never wrote a name or address on the envelope in which he keeps the letter. He kept it in his footlocker, left at his base after writing it. Every now and then, when he got back to the base, he would read it over again and see, because it is the only thing that could make him weep--the only source of any true emotion or feeling he could muster up. He never sent it back home, and, as an epilogue, he survives the war, and returns home the next year, as his deployment had finally expired. He returns to civilian life, suffering the failures of social and romantic relationships, years of heavy post traumatic stress, and unreasonable disdain from his countrymen, until 1975, when there comes some sort of relief: the war is finally over. He goes on to live a fairly ordinary life, though he still suffers from the effects that war can have on a person--often suffering in secret. Decades later, while looking through some storage, he recovers the letter he wrote to nobody but himself. He weeps again, as he had in Vietnam, for all the memories come flowing back. However, re-examining the letter makes him feel much better, much clearer, and much less stoic and stagnant.
Heavily-laden with Vietnam War and period references.
Request permission to use this poem